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Google Unveils The Google Pack
7hunderstruck writes "Google yesterday announced the release of Google Pack, a 'free collection of essential software'. Along with Google's own programs, such as Google Toolbar and Google Earth, Google Pack contains Firefox, Adobe Reader, a six month subscription to Norton Antivirus, and Trillian as well as other apps. Any respectable /. user should have most of this suite installed already (excluding a few things), but it will be nice to make it all widely available to the general public." Commentary on ZDNet.
Where's the fucking source code, Google?!
Wheres the mention that it's XP only in the article text? I personally feel this is rather an important fact in not wasting people's time on stuff they can't use.
I like muppets.
Google hired the main Gaim developer, and they don't ship it as part of the Google Pack?
Despite the article- I don't see Trillian listed in on the article page. If they ship Trillian and not Gaim, that'd be even more strange.
Why did Google choose to include Norton? I've found Norton AV to be the most worthless antivirus software I've ever used. It has consistently let me down in terms of protecting my computer. I've even tested it against a known virus. A rival AV was able to catch it. Norton wasn't.
A couple of times I was hit by a trojan by simply going to a web page. Next thing you know, my system gets infected, and Norton shuts down completely and won't start back up again. That's what you call protection? No thanks.
eTrade SUCKS
I myself would sugest Avast, I've never had an issue with it. Though I haven't used AVG for years it could have changed, back then it wasn't looking to good.
Utinam me logica falsa tuam philosophiam totam suffodiant.
Google Earth is more of a "fun" program. Nice to toy around once in a while, but nothing I have always installed.
.doc eat your heart out.
Picasa is nifty. A free image editor is always nice.
Google Pack Screensaver Don't really care about that one. I usually blank my screen.
Google Desktop I don't use since I have "order in my chaos"(tm) and don't really like to things hooked into everything.
Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer will be a godsend for all IE unsers, but I don't need it since I do Firefox.
Mozilla Firefox with Google Toolbar guess this will make Firefox's markedshare do another jump.
Norton Antivirus 2005 Special Edition - personally I use AntiVirus Personal Editon, its free and quite good, but if I think about all the PCs without any up-to-date protection out there its a real godsend.
Ad-Aware SE Personal 4236 programs found? If you have used IE, not used a virusscanner and/or have a "shiny, let's click it" PC user this thing will cleanse your system. Otherwise once every 3 months is sufficient.
Adobe Reader 7 A no-brainer, one of the most portable formats around (let's see how Open Document spreads),
+++ MELON MELON MELON +++ Out of Cheese Error +++ redo from start +++
Going a bit of topic here but what's peoples opinions of AntiVir? Seems fine myself but everyone else seems to use AVG
This is a bad trend. All of the software (with the possible exception of Norton AV, which I've never used) runs just fine on Win2k. Why the XP restriction? This is twice in one week I've run up against an arbitrary won't-install-on-2000 roadblock. (The first was trying to install Age of Empires III, which actually runs just fine on 2000 if you can manage to trick the installer.) It looks like the days of Win2k are numbered, not because it can't run the software but simply because the software refuses to install. I really hate artificial limitations.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
"Any respectable /. user should have most of this suite installed already (excluding a few things)" /. user(s)" running linux on my main box. Seriously google, port some of this amazing software to the operating system that gave so much to you on the back end while you were starting up - all for free
well i installed nothing from it as i'm on of the "respectable
For their XP userbase, they should have included ClamWin instead.
But, ClamWin is unlikely to pay Google for distribution like Symantec.
Ditto with Spybot vis-a-vis LavaSoft.
Et PDFCreator v. Adobe.
This is a quote from the official "Google Philosophy" page. Oh well.
Any respectable /. user should have most of this suite installed already
/. user I know would run only Open Source Software
Who is that guy writing about ?
Any respectable
and would have nothing to do with anything needing a virus checker.
Ernest J.W. ter Kuile
If I can do it, its probably not worth doing... probably
From the eula:
"By installing the Software, you agree to automatically request and receive Updates."
You can keep your Adobe (Acrobat) Reader. Way to heavy.
;)
I've been using Foxit Reader for a while now and it just works and it is fast.
Besides... the name is just great with one of the other tools in the Google pack: Firefox and Foxit
Now we just needs a Foxbar, Deskfox, Fox-aware, Foxasa, Anti-fox (hmm, that doesn't sound good), Planetfox, Foxsaver.
I notice there's no Mozilla Thunderbird in the Pack.
Google wouldn't want to cut in on their own GMail market, ehh?
Mudge
In theory, theory and practice are the same.
In practice, they're not.
I think you're correct. I'm running Windows XP x64 Professional Coroporate and it tells me I need Windows XP.
Scorta futuere amo!
what about google summer of code?
Speaking as a Computer Science student with many friends who took part in Summer of Code, I think that they really did give something to Open Source - although admittedly it was, financially, absolute peanuts to google.
Actually, i think this is a huge step forward - google as a company is hugely trusted: if google promotes firefox like this, then it can only be a good thing. Maybe this will be the final push needed to make firefox the de-facto mainstream browser!
e^(i pi)+2 bottles hanging on the wall, one falls off and now its
About OpenOffice.org.
According to this:
I spoke to Marissa Mayer about Pack, and she had some fun stuff to say about it. I noticed no version of Open Office in the Pack, and she reminded me this is just the first version of the Pack, and since it updates itself automatically, why, there might be Open Office in an update shortly. They are in active discussions, I was told.
You missed some!
Network
putty for SSH (even commandline SCP which rules), wget for sucking down the web, opera if you don't like firefox, and some form of bittorrent client, like bitcomet.
Utilities
gvim, unxutils or in a pinch some downloads from the gnuwin32 tools, tools from SysInternals.
Multimedia
Don't forget Mediaplayer classic (MPC) which by happy coincedence is included in the k-lite mega codec pack (from codecpack.nl).
Security
grisoft AV, tools from SysInternals.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
Well....the funny thing is, if you set back your calendar in 6 months when Norton gives you a friendly reminder it's about to expire, you can extend the life of its 'trial period' indefinately. I've tried this before with success. If it doesn't bug you to have the calendar off, it can be a handy tool to not have to pay for stuff.
Yes, this is redundant, but I just want to help make the chorus louder:
NORTON SUCKS.
January of last year I set up a test platform and installed all of the AV programs recommended by the microsoft link page (you know, the page it sends you to when you install XP without AV software)?
Panda, McAfee, Norton, F-Secure, and two others. They all sucked except F-Secure. It just sits there and quietly does its job -- No bullshit menus or intrusions or dialogs that won't go away. (Hell, Panda even put an icon on my xp LOGIN screen that wouldn't go away after de-install).
I think this is one of those cases when redundancy is essential.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
It offered no real improvement at the time
Better RAM management was worth it alone. Every windows 9x machine I had would eventually eat all it RAM and force a reboot if it wasn't rebooted regularly. Windows XP I've been able to leave on for weeks and it mangages RAM much better. (Pro version, not Home).
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
Speed up Adobe Reader by disabling the plugins.
/plug_ins dir and move out everything except EWH32.api and Search.api. Should load nearly instantly now, though YMMV.
Go the the
HTH
I'd download Opera separately for my browsing needs anyway, though.
As an Opera user, I'd have to disagree with their choice of browser. Heck, it's even smaller and faster, yet more powerful and user friendly than Firefox out of the box. But of course, the Google toolbar doesn't support Opera...Oh yeah, and their choice of antivirus software and multimedia player sucks too. They chose the worst there, not the best. I think that someone is not telling us the full story... Are we supposed to believe that Google did this out of the kindness of their hearts? If that was the case, the pack would have looked a bit different if you ask me.
Clever signature text goes here.
I would not use Norton's Anit-Virus even if it was free for life, came on a golden CD and updates were hand-delivered by trained flying monkeys.
A one-year subscription came with my motherboard, and I duly installed it after everything else (including a few games). Performance across the board plummeted, apps took ages to open, or sometimes didn't, every file seemed to take ages to read in or write back to disk - in short, everything started to suck badly.
This is on a brand new Athlon-64 3200, with 1GB RAM and 2x160GB drives. It was like greased lightning until NAV was installed.
I removed NAV and after a little looking around, installed Avast (arrr, me hearties!) and it's been great. No complaints at all, and importantly - no perceived performance difference between running Avast and not running any virus checker.