5 Light Alternatives For Anyone Who Doesn't Want To Waste Money On A New Computer

I'm writing this post on an older laptop. It's not ancient by any means, and has Windows XP and so on, but it's not as fast as the newer bits of kit floating around. Unfortunately many of the standard programs are designed for these hugely fast computers with massive memories, and it just becomes a pain to use older ones.

Anyway it got me thinking that some of you might have the same problem (assuming you're using PCs and not Macs) and might benefit from knowing that instead of going out and buying a new computer, you can simply replace most of your core programs with some light and fast loading ones without losing any value.

Here's my list of the 5 programs you should consider replacing

1. Internet - Internet Explorer with Chrome or Opera or Firefox.
   Yes I know I said Chrome didn't have support for toolbars and wasn't much faster when browsing with a normal computer, but with older ones it rocks. If it doesn't do it for you try Opera or Firefox which are more compatible with all websites.
2. Music - Windows Media Player with Winamp.
   Winamp will do everything you want with music, and quite a bit of video too, and it'll do it fast and conveniently.
3. Video - Windows Media Player, Real Player, DVD player etc... replace all in one go with the VLC player.
   The VLC player is light and fast and will play pretty much any video content with no need to download codecs and so on, like you need to for all the standard heavyweights.
4. Images - Windows Picture Viewer, Paint etc with IrfanView.
   IrfanView is a very light image viewer that will also you to do all the basic editing you'll ever need.
5. PDF - Adobe Acrobat with Foxit Reader.
   Adobe is the worst culprit of all standard programs. It is huge, bloated, slow and most of what it does is frankly useless to 99% of users. If you don't replace any of the others, get rid of this and replace it with the Foxit reader instead. You won't believe the difference!

You could also look at lighter operating systems instead of Windows for example Ubuntu, or try replacing Microsoft Office with Open Office, but these have greater variances from what you're familiar with. It would take more out of you in terms of learning new interfaces and there'll be a fair number of surprises both good and bad in terms of their comparative capabilities.

Hope this helps!