There are so many features in Microsoft Word 2007 that it would take forever to list them all, but I’ll go through 10 of them that you probably didn’t know about.

Cover Page Feature

Submitting a school project or assignment, but realize that you forgot to include a cover page? No problem! On the Insert tab, click “Cover Page” to insert a fully-formatted cover page with a title, author, date and other information.

Bookmark Feature

If you have a 10+ page document and don’t want your readers using CTRL+F to try and find what they’re looking for, bookmarks are the way to go. On the Insert tab, click on “Bookmark.” You can then assign a name to a specific part of your document. After that, create a Hyperlink to jump directly to a bookmarked location.

Hyperlink Feature

Speaking of Hyperlinks, Microsoft Word automatically parses most URLs, but for those it doesn’t, you can do so by clicking the Insert tab and selecting the “Hyperlink” button. This lets you create a link to a Web page, a picture, an email address, or another program.

SmartArt Feature

Need a Flow Chart? No problem! On the Insert tab, click on the “SmartArt” button. SmartArt graphics allow you to visually communicate information. They range from graphical lists and process diagrams to more complicated things such as Venn diagrams and organizational charts.

ClipArt Feature

Once again on the Insert tab, the “ClipArt” button lets you insert drawings, movies, sounds or even stock photography into your document to illustrate a specific concept.

Balloons Feature

When reviewing a document for spelling and grammatical errors, the Balloons feature comes in handy. On the Review tab, click “Balloons” to activate the feature. When you make a revision to the document, it will show as a balloon, either in the margins of the document or within the document itself.

DropCap Feature

Ever wonder how they make it in books and novels so that the first letter of the paragraph is larger than the rest of the letters?  Well, the DropCap feature makes this a breeze to do. Sure, you can simply enlarge the font size of the first letter in your paragraph, but this way it’s much more fun. Just go to the Insert tab and click on the “Drop Cap” button.

WordArt Feature

With this nifty feature, you can insert decorative text into your document. Just click on the “WordArt” button in the Insert tab.

Header and Footer Feature

Also located on the Insert tab are the “Header” and “Footer” buttons. With these, you can force specific text to appear on the top and bottom of your pages when you print them out. This is really useful for titles and page numbers.

Watermark Feature

And we’ve saved the best feature for last! Placing a water mark on your page ensures that someone else cannot just steal your work, photocopy it, and claim it as their own. For instance, you can place your name as your Watermark, and it will be displayed in lighter font behind the text in your document. You can also select a picture to use as a Watermark. On the Page Layout tab, click “Watermark” and then click “Custom Watermark.”

Microsoft Office

The most popular office software in Linux is OpenOffice.org, which importantly, has been designed to be a replacement for MS Office and so can open up and save documents created in Microsoft Office. OpenOffice.org includes Writer which is word processor and can also edit webpages like MS Frontpage, Calc spreadsheet software, Impress presentation software, Base database designer, Draw vector drawing program and Math formula editor. In the most popular Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu, OpenOffice.org comes installed as default. There are also Windows and Mac versions.

Microsoft Publisher / QuarkXPress

A great program that I really enjoy is Scribus, which is a desktop publishing program that is constantly improving and is even being used by professional businesses. It can be used to create items from PDF presentations to books, posters, magazines and brochures and includes some good example files for these. More examples and templates of professional quality created by other users can be downloaded.

Microsoft Outlook / Outlook Express

I would recommend either of two programs. The first is Evolution which includes an e-mail reader, contact manager, sticky-notes, to-do list and a calendar and comes pre-installed in many Linux distributions. The second program is Mozilla Thunderbird which is a popular e-mail program that has a great feature in that many user created extensions that can be downloaded that improve the program in many different ways, from themes to dictionaries.

MSN Messenger / AIM / Yahoo Messenger

The most popular messenger program is Pidgin, which not only allows you to long into your msn account, but also includes support for multiple messenger services such as Yahoo, AIM, ICQ, GoogleTalk and others that I've never heard of. Other good programs include aMSN which tries to copy the feel of MSN and Kopete for the KDE desktop environment.

Internet Explorer

The most popular alternative on both Linux and Windows is Mozilla Firefox which is a great web-browser that like the Thunderbird e-mail software can be changed and configured with various themes and a great number of add-ons such as advertisement blockers, RSS readers, spell-checkers and many more. An alternative is the Opera browser which is very quick at opening web-pages. Also, The Konqueror file manager can even be used as a web browser.

Skype

Even though the most popular alternative is Ekiga, Skype runs perfectly in the most popular Linux distributions so there isn't really a point to changing.

BitTorrent / uTorrent

Azureus is probably the most popular choice for downloading .torrent files, however I think the Transmission or Deluge programs are just as popular and tend to use less system resources to run.

Photoshop

Even though it's not yet as feature-rich as Photoshop, a program called The Gimp is a great alternative and there is constant development on it to improve it.

Itunes / Windows Media Player

For listening to music and organizing your music files the two most popular programs are either Amorak or Rhythmbox which come with many features such as CD player, library, playlist, MP3 player support and online radio station support.

For playing videos, VLC is a great program that can play all types of video formats, DVD's and music files.

Partition Magic

GParted is a great free program for managing partitions which is included in most of the major Linux distributions and can even be downloaded and booted separately of a CD.

Nero / DVD and CD Burning

For burning video CD's and DVD's I recommend an excellent program called DeVeDe, and for burning audio, data, image files and copying disks, Brasero is an excellent program (and also includes video burning)

However, if you want to install Linux but don't want to change from the Windows software, some Windows programs such as MS Office can be run from within Linux. This is done by using an emulator such as the free WINE or the not so free crossover Office which can successfully install and run some Windows programs from within Linux.

Open the PowerPoint (ppt) program by clicking on [Start] and selecting ppt from the [All Programs] menu or by double clicking on the ppt icon from your desktop. Click on the Format menu at the top of the ppt program and select [Slide Design] and or [Slide Layout] depending on what kind of presentation you wish to present.

Using the text of what you wish to present type it into each slide as required.  Clicking on each section of the slide allows you to add headers, text, or pictures. To add a video, click on the [Insert] menu and select [Movies and Sounds from file] and then navigate to the file and insert it. Once inserted you may drag and shape it to fit into whichever part of the slide you wish.  Ensure also that you select how you wish it to play when you insert it. Either [Automatically] or [When clicked].

To add sounds or music files, repeat the same steps as for movies and select the sound file.  Once again ensure that you select the mode of playing as you insert it, this can be changed later if desired though. Slide transition.  In the [Slide Show] menu select [Slide Transition].  This feature allows you to choose how each consecutive slide will appear to your viewers.  Rather than just flipping from one slide to another you can slide, you can open blinds, fade in, fade out, simply select from the menu of transitions.

Some tips to remember when using PowerPoint: Any alterations can be made by opening the program and changing entries.  Alterations can be made to inserted multimedia items by right clicking on the particular icon within the slide. PowerPoint presentations can be viewed adequately on computers however they are best viewed on a screen, projected by a data projector.

The following software (and more to come in part two) represents the cream of the crop for free software for your Macintosh. However, remember that just because it is free to download, it doesn't mean you can't contribute to its development. If you find a piece of open source software that does everything you need it to do and more, I encourage you to support the development by donating money, submitting bug reports, and getting in there and doing some coding yourself. The open source software community is a community that works best when everyone contributes and everyone benefits.

Adium

Adium is quite simply the best instant messenger/chat software available for OS X. It can support all your accounts (AIM, iChat, Google Chat, Jabber, MySpace, Facebook, ICQ.....) and allows you to manage them each individually. For those of you that like customizing all your apps, you can go to the AdiumXtras website and download different themes, sounds, etc.

Adium does not yet have video chat support, so if you do a lot of video chatting or live screen sharing, you may want to stick with iChat.

NeoOffice

NeoOffice is an MS Office alternative that is based around the venerable OpenOffice platform. You could install OpenOffice just fine using X11, but many people (including myself) think that NeoOffice looks better and integrates into the Leopard environment better.

Past versions of NeoOffice have been plagued by reports of slowness, but while it isn't quite zippy yet, recent releases have been noticeably faster. However, it is solid and stable. It has word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and vector drawing functionality. It is free (as in speech) and free (as in beer). It keeps Microsoft off of your Mac.

It can read and save into most office programs' file formats (including Microsoft Office). It generally handles even complex Office files with embedded objects just fine. It has an excellent support wiki. I'm using it to type this article right now, and I can't recommend it highly enough.

Transmission

Torrents are no longer just the domain of illegal file sharers. Many companies use torrents to distribute their software, bands to distribute albums straight to fans, etc. In fact, a solid torrent software is pretty essential to most computer users. Thankfully, there is a great open-source torrent software available for OS X in Transmission.

Transmission does all the things you would expect of a full-featured BitTorrent client (selective file downloading, file priority, bandwidth management, peer exchange, encrypted connections), while still remaining small enough to not be a drain on system resources.

VLC

Confused by codecs? Frustrated when you try to open a video file only to find that your video program of choice doesn't support it? VLC supports all popular (and quite a few obscure) file formats. You can play DVDs, lossless audio files, streaming videos, and more. If you don't want to have to check whether a file is a mov or an avi or a wma or an flv - just get VLC!

Cyberduck

Full disclosure: FTP is one of the few things I don't use open source software for. I manage multiple web sites and frequently have to do obscure shell commands and remote editing. However, for the vast majority of people that just need to manage one web site or occasionally download files from FTP servers, Cyberduck fits the bill.

It includes remote synchronization of local files. It also has the ability to resume transfers, full Applescript support, bookmarks, integration with your Apple keychain and Bonjour services, and has a cute icon to boot.

Excel AutoCorrect can help you do this.

Goto Tools->Options, select Spelling tab, then click AutoCorrect Options.

Fill in Field “Replace:” with nms, and Field “With:” with New Mexico State University, click OK.

From now on, wherever you want to input New Mexico State University, just type nms, and Excel will automatically fill the cell with New Mexico State University. Isn't it fun?

COMPUTER SECURITY

3 years ago, worm “Blaster” hurt “Windows XP”. Whit so bad virus on the loose it was very dangerous to connect to the internet. We won't get in trouble having firewall, anti-virus and anti-spyware installed on our computer.

Firewall - If we were living in a house, which would be surrounded by a big wall, nobody evil would come in. Firewall does the same thing. Doesn't let any hackers to break into our computer.

ZoneAlarm Free:

A free firewall, which is one of the best, is needed. Many tests have proved that this is the best free firewall. If ZoneAlarm Free sees that someone is trying to connect to our computer, program blocks it and tells us about it.

Outpost Firewall Pro:

This program was the best in 2006 and definitely is one of the best on 2007. Not only “Outpost Firewall Pro” guards our computer, but it also guards itself. Hackers can turn off firewalls, but Outpost won't let that happen. But don't forget that this firewall is not free.

Anti-virus - If our computer will get a virus and he won't get any help, we can lose many data. It won't happen if we will have an anti-virus.

Avira AntiVir PE Classic:

This anti-virus is very effective. Free fighter against viruses will kill all viruses. It is very easy to use this anti-virus. But this program is slow. It takes Avira AntiVir PE Classic to find out about a new virus about 5 hours.

Kaspersky:

Definitely the best anti-virus around. It was 1st on many tests and will be in the future so I recommend Kaspersky for all. Anti-Spyware - spies are very bad for us. They steal information from us and use it for bad deeds.

Ad-Aware SE Personal:

You can often see how spyware gets into our computer. Free anti-spyware like Ad-Aware SE Personal will detect all spies and delete them.

Webroot Spy Sweeper:

This is a not free anti-spyware but worth to buy. It is more effective than a free anti-spyware. Also it can block spies before they enter our computer.

MOVIES, PHOTOS AND MUSIC

We can watch movies, listen to music and look at photos with our computer. Without additional programs it is not easy to do it.

Listen to music - Many people have music in their computers. Our OS probably already has a music player, but I recommend other, better, free players.

Winamp:

You probably know about this music player. It is one of most popular and the best. We can also listen to radio with this player.

Foobar2000:

A free and easy to use music player. It easily plays all music formats. It is not well known, but it doesn't mean that this player is bad. I recommend this for those, who have not a powerful computer.

Watching movies and photos - Windows Xp has Windows Media Player, which can play movies, but it's not always recognizes a video. If that happens, you won't be able to watch movies. It will never happen if you install other video player.

BSPlayer:

One of the most popular video players. BSPlayer can make videos look better, show video subs and do other good things.

VLC Player:

This video player is not presentable like other players, but it has many good possibilities. One of the best, it can show videos trough LAN. But if we won't need this, we will still like it because it shows all movies.

Irfan View:

You will be able to not only look at photos, but and correct them with Irfan View. It can change size, remove red eyes. This free program should really be in our computer if we hold all our photos in computer.

Picasa:

This program is great because when you install it; all your photos automatically will be putted in folders by date. You can also edit photos with this great program.

FOR INTERNET

Computer without an internet - computer without a future. We often browse through many web pages. That's why you need a browser. Many people use “Internet Explorer 6” but this explorer is not the best. We also like to talk with our friends. That's why we need a messenger and e-mail.

Internet browsers - Don't use IE6! There are many better browser around.

Firefox 2:

This browser has become very popular. Firefox is very stable and has many possibilities. It has many add-ons. Like showing weather, downloading all videos from internet and other.

Opera:

Opera is not only a browser for a PC but it also can be used on mobile phones. The newest version has Speed Dial. It makes the fastest even faster.

Internet Explorer 7:

Newest IE version. It is much better than the old one, because it has many new possibilities and is much safer. If you want to continue to use IE, download IE7.

E-mail - Windows already has and e-mail program “Outlook Express”. But it is not so good. I recommend other e-mail programs.

The Bat:

It is a very powerful and easy to use e-mail. It won't let other to view our mail. The Bat also checks all incoming mail for spam. This way our computer is protected from viruses and spyware.

ThunderBird:

It is created by Firefox creators. It is also free and fast. It also has a good protection from spam.

Messengers - We all talk through the internet. For that we need a nice messenger.

Skype:

It is absolutely free. We can not only call to PC, we can also call to mobile phones, but we will have to pay for that. To talk to others, we will need a microphone and headphones. We also can see our friend through his webcam.

ICQ:

It is the most popular messenger. ICQ name is made from "I seek you”. We can not only chat, but also play little games. When we install this program, we will get our ICQ number. If we know our friends ICQ number, we can call him.

mIRC:

To use IRC you need a small program like mIRC. mIRC is a friendly IRC client that is well equipped with options and tools. mIRC is shareware, which means that you can download mIRC and try it out freely for 30 days to evaluate it. If during, or at the end of, the evaluation period you decide that you would like to continue using mIRC, you must register your copy.

OFFICE PROGRAMS

Having a PC means that sooner or later we will have to write a document. To do so we need one of the programs listed below.

Microsoft Office:

Writing a document with MS Office is very easy. Not long ago 2007 version was released. It is much better than 2003. It costs much, but it is worth it. Office 2007 also includes new applications and server-side tools.

OpenOffice:

OpenOffice is a free office suite of applications available for many different operating systems including Linux, Microsoft Windows, Solaris, OpenVMS, IRIX and Mac OS X. It supports the OpenDocument standard for data interchange.

ADDITIONAL SOFTWARE

We have many programs installed now, but it is not enough. We also need few thing.

Archives - With such program we can make one file out of many.

WinRAR:

WinRAR is a powerful archive manager. It can backup your data and reduce size of email attachments, decompress RAR, ZIP and other files downloaded from Internet and create new archives in RAR and ZIP file format. You may try WinRAR before buy, its trial version is available in http://www.rarlab.com/.

ZipGenius:

ZipGenius is the absolutely free software for Windows that lets you compress files to almost any kind of archive. ZipGenius supports more than 20 compressed archive formats, including CD/DVD-ROM image files in ISO9660 standard. This is the file compression suite you were searching for: it is free and easy to use, plus it supports more than 20 formats of compressed archives, including RAR, ARJ, ACE, CAB, SQX, OpenOffice.org documents and the excellent7-zip.ZipGenius now can precompress executable files going to be added to a ZIP archive through the UPXcompressor.

CD/ DVD BURNING

PC which has a Windwos XP can burn CD. But it is not very good solution.

Nero Burning ROM:

Nero delivers Multimedia Applications for capturing, editing, burning, managing, sharing as well as Audio/Video Compression Technologies. I used it, using it and will use it.

CDBurnerXp Pro:

It is free and a perfect burner. I tried it because many people say that this burner is one of the best. They were right! It is very good, but I prefer NERO because it has more features, but not everybody need all NERO features, that"s why I recommend CDBurnerXp Pro.

That's it! These are the programs, which is needed by everybody. Don't forget to update all software.