Top Five Free Apps For Your Netbook

This year saw the unstoppable rise of the netbook which was partly on account of improved functionality, better chip-sets and consumers increasingly demanding more and more mobility. However, a netbook is only as good as its applications, something that everyone knows these days, but with so many applications to chose from, which are the best ones? And more importantly, which are the best free applications? Read on after the jump to see which applications made the cut…

VLC Player
VLC Player is the only media player you’ll ever need. Not only is it free, simple to use, and probably the most widely used player by people “in the know” it’ll play pretty much anything you put in it - and we mean anything!

In addition to this, it runs exceptionally well on the majority of netbooks, which can, from time-to-time struggle a little running programs like Windows Media Player and iTunes. So in this sense, if you haven’t already got VLC you absolutely need to get it. You’ll never look back, we promise.

Check out the latest netbooks

TinyResMeter
This handy little netbook application monitors and tracks which applications your netbook is using and is a very nice alternative to Windows task Manager as it does a far more specific job - it also looks a lot better too, which is always a bonus! The basic idea behind this app is to help you monitor and track which resources you’re using and how often, this way you can learn to keep the processes down so that your netbook runs more efficiently.

Xubuntu
While Xubunto isn’t an actual application it does come with some very handy applications built into it. The Linux based program, which is optimized for use with netbooks, comes with a plethora of netbook-ready apps that are designed to make life that little bit easier.

Xubuntu includes the Abiword word processor, Catfish desktop search, Evince PDF reader, Firefox, the GIMP graphics editor, a spreadsheet program, text editor, calender, internet messenger, Thunderbird, and also IRC to name but a few. In short, this is a very helpful piece of kit and one that every netbook owner should have.

Google Chrome
Ever since its release Google Chrome has been making waves in the competitive world of browsing. We have been using Chrome for quite some time now and have found it to be a reliable, well designed, and extremely snappy browser. Granted, there isn’t much in it between Mozilla and Chrome, but after using both, we have to say we’re starting to prefer Chrome, partly for its design, partly for its speed, and partly because it’s so simple.

OpenOffice
Having a solid word processor and office suite on your netbook is a must have as you will always need to word process, create presentations and work out your tax and budgets on spread sheets. In other words, these things are necessities for both professional and casual users a like. However, now you don’t have to pay Microsoft a fortune for them, as you can get them all free with OpenOffice.

Once you have OpenOffice installed you’ll have Writer (word processor), Calc (spreadsheet), Impress (presentations), Base (data basing), Draw (editing diagrams) and even one called Math, which is used to edit maths formulas. In short, this is a brilliant app for anyone on a budget or anyone that doesn’t want to pay a fortune for software - who in their right mind would, after all?