Australian PC User contributing editor
Freeware software
10 free apps you can install on any Windows PC
May 18th
Load with lots of audio and video codecs, VLC is the one media player that doesn’t really need a codec pack to make it work. Not only that, it also has other tricks up its sleeve including DVD playback and even DVD playback with menus direct from ISO rips. (No need to rip and convert DVDs any more! yay!)
Also comes in Windows, Linux and Mac OS X flavours. It doesn’t have the slickest interface in the world but what it lacks in looks, it more than makes up for in function.
If you’re getting into ebooks, this More >
Q&A – My Windows XP netbook won’t play DVD movies. How do I fix this?
Apr 30th
A. For various reasons, Windows XP doesn’t come with any software to play DVD movies.
All you need though is the right software (I’m assuming here you’ve got an external DVD drive to play the actual movie disc). And that software is VLC media player.
Get this, install it, run it and you should find it’ll present you with your disc’s top menu.
VLC plays a whole heap of other video formats too so don’t just think this is a DVD player. It’s better described as an “almost-everything” player.
Your netbook should have no trouble playing DVD movies – even if it’s an original More >
Ubuntu 10.04 is out!
Apr 30th
Ubuntu 10.04 is finally out! You can grab a copy here.
Having played with the first Beta and the Release Candidate, I’m hopeful that 10.04 could be a bit of a breakout release for Canonical and for Linux in general.
There are many different releases of Linux (including PC User’s own UserOS series) however, the theme and styling chosen for 10.04 is definitely the cleanest Canonical has produced so far.
What’s more, it’s nice that this has coincided with a “long term support” release – that means it’ll be good for three years rather than the usual 18 months.
Work will begin on the More >