Taking the net to India -part 2	Page 1 2 3

Software

There are no real must haves specific to India, at the end of the day you know what you want to do and probably have your own favourite software to do it. The software below for laptops covers only my own preferences, there is a lot more available in each category than is listed here.

Laptop software

Disk checking and repair utilities

Its advisable to bring basic utility software with you in case of disk problems, plus a copy of the operating system install disk. A utility such as Norton's Utilities covers most eventualities in combination with the excellent Diskwarrior.

Firewall

The recent (aug 03) spate of Internet worms has confirmed the usefulness of a personal firewall program if you are connecting to the net. The worms spread through a vulnerablity in most versions of the windows OS, and unlike viruses all that is needed to become infected is to connect to the net with an unpatched computer. At the height of the attacks my firewall was denying around four attempts per minute to access port 135, presumably the worm looking for new hosts to infect. A firewall should be used in conjunction with the software security patches released by Microsoft with tedious regularity.

Nortons Personal firewall is available for both Mac and PC and should repel most attacks. There are numerous other free, shareware and commercial firewalls available for both platforms; what you choose is a matter of personal preference. Apple's new operating system OSX comes with a built in firewall.

Email client

For Windows or Apple laptops my preference is for Eudora from Qualcomm. Its simple to use and set up, allows for multiple email accounts and is largely trouble free. It lacks the horrific "friendly and cheerful" features of MS Outlook which make Microsoft software so loathable and encourage viruses to spread via email. Although Eudora lacks the sophisticated anti spam features found in many email packages, the recently released Eudora v6 addresses that too.

Digital images

Adobe Photoshop is king in the world of digital imaging. If you want to resize your digicam pics for emailing, overprint captions, or make full digital art illustrations, this is the kiddie. A "lite" version with reduced features often comes bundled free with scanners. The new consumer version is Photoshop Elements, which is comparatively inexpensive.

Thorsten Lemke's shareware Graphiconverter covers most of the functions Photoshop leaves out. It is ideal for batch coversion of images, or creating instant JPEG or HTML index sheets of your photos, plus it has a usefule browser function for quick drag and drop picture sorting.

Website design

My favourite is Macromedia Dreamweaver, a fully featured web design package that allows WYSIWYG design, uploading and management of very complex websites. The ability to make page templates allows for easy duplication of pages and easy link management Many 'free' magazine cover disks contain a 30 day trial version. Adobe GoLive is similar, with the advantage of excellent integration with other Adobe software including Photoshop.

Encyclopaedia

Encyclopaedia Britannica is available on CD as 2 disks. the set contains over 70,000 articles, a dictionary, plus a clickable atlas with detailed country information and statistics. It doesn't cover everything Indian, but can be great for some historical background on Indian (or world) history, ancient and modern.

Software for Palm OS PDA devices

With the Palm OS device, it is much more important to sort out the software you want before you go travelling, install it, and then carry it burned onto a backup CD. It is almost impossible to download and install software on the Palm OS without using a desktop computer to do the installing.

Email clients for Palm OS

Eudora

There's a couple of choices here. Eudora is probably functionally the best free email client on the palm, allowing multiple accounts and mailboxes and easy mail management. If you are using a Windows computer as well, you can sync your desktop and Palm device emails. Email addresses can be selected from the Palms built in address book.

Multimail

Multimail pro is similar in features, but allows synchronisation with a desktop Macintosh. You may get a free version of this bundled with a Palm modem, but for the Full Monty you have to pay about 20 UKP.

Web browsing

Avantgo offline browser

Avantgo's service is really outstanding, allowing for the download of entire websites for offline reading. You have to set up an account at the Avantgo portal free of charge, then specify which sites you wish to download, the maximum amount of data, and the how many page levels down to go. You can choose from Avantgo favourites, or enter your own URLs. Enter your logon name and password into the Avantgo client on the Palm, and log on via your palm modem. Avantgo will download the site you requested page by page, with each page optimised for size and display on the palm device. Although you can request pictures to be downloaded as well, its scarcely worth it at the size of a palm screen. Log off, and you can browse the downloaded pages at your leisure, with all the links intact. My selection of news from the BBC runs to about 220 pages, and download time can be anywhere between 2 minutes and 10 minutes depending on the connection to the net. You can even use forms on web pages, with the data filled in offline submitted at the next logon. The Avantgo browser can also be used for online browsing.

Eudora Web

Eudora web comes in the same free package as Eudora mail. While it is a competent browser, it lacks the ability of Avantgo to download sites for offline reading, and so is less valuable.

Word processing

Wordsmith

Blue Nomad's Wordsmith is the one for anyone wanting to do large amounts of writing on their Palm device while travelling. Its really a full featured word processor that can format documents and sync them to a desktop computer which has MS word or similar software that will read RTF (rich text files). The fully paid version includes a spell checker and thesaurus. Its also an excellent program for reading books as text you may have brought with you. There are plenty of other shareware and freeware document readers at sites such as Palmgear.

Backup

JB backup

Backing up is easier and more reliable if you have software to do it, and Handforts JB backup is highly recommended for backup of Palm OS devices to a flash card. Set up the files you wish to back up once, and then you can do a full backup with one click on subsequent occasions. There is also a compression option which will maximise the space on the card, but slows the process down a bit.

Other Palm OS stuff

Lunar

Travel and life in India seems to involve the full moon a lot, as you spend a lot more time outdoors at night than you would do in the west. Lunar is a simple shareware program that gives you the dates for lunar phases, and that all important full moon party.

Part 3 in this series will be added to the site around end November. If you have any comments or spot any inaccuracies, please drop me an email.

Some useful links