With the start of school and university courses, it is important to equip your computer with the most useful programs for taking notes, writing and organizing files and jobs. Each student, depending on the school or university course that follows, may have different needs, but there are programs that cannot be renounced, whether it is possible to use a PC or a Mac in the classroom, or later, at home, to study better.
In this list we see the best free PC and Mac programs for students, school or university .
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1) Office or LibreOffice
Microsoft Office is a suite of mandatory programs for any student, especially in Excel and Word programs as well as Powerpoint when creating research presentations or group work.
If you don't already have Microsoft Office, you can use a suite of equivalent programs like LibreOffice, completely free for Windows and Mac PCs.
To write Excel documents or tables you can, in addition or alternatively, use Google Docs which offers very useful online tools for working in a team on the same project.
Google Docs also stores documents online in Google Drive and avoids any risk of losing something or not having a document when you need it.
Google Docs can only be used if there is an internet connection.
READ ALSO: Best programs to write books or texts of any kind on the computer
2) To take notes
Word isn't the best tool for taking notes on the fly.
On Windows PC Microsoft Onenote is much more effective , free for Windows and Mac, full of functions to quickly write drafts and notes, which remain synchronized online on all used devices, including smartphones.
If you don't like Onenote, there is Evernote which is not a program but a web application.
Other alternatives are ResophNotes for Windows PC, a more minimalist one that organizes notes in a tree structure or Simplenote for Mac.
3) Wunderlist is an app for Windows and Mac to organize things to do, very easy to use, which synchronizes on multiple devices, computers and mobiles.
Complex task lists can be created and shared with other people.
At school it can be a convenient way to mark homework.
Alternatively or in addition you can also use iHomework for Mac, to mark homework.
4) Books
Kindle Reader for Windows, Android, iPhone, iPad and Mac is the best program for keeping school books, provided that they are available in digital version and that you can take your laptop to school or university, without having to load the backpack.
The Kindle is an excellent computer e-reader.
5) Dropbox, Google Drive or Onedrive are the best free cloud storage spaces in which to keep important school files.
In this way, even if you forget your computer, you can recover the file or document from a friend's computer or smartphone.
6) SumatraPDF or Foxit Reader are excellent free PDF readers, much lighter than Adobe Acrobat Reader.
7) Google Chrome should be the browser to use at school thanks to the Google store applications that provide many useful tools at school.
Almost all the programs on this list have an alternative like Chrome app, although an internet connection is almost always required to use these apps.
8) Skype is the program for making video conferences with fellow students and studying with them even if everyone is at home.
Without spending hours on the phone, you can use Skype from your PC and mobile phone without problems, for free.
9) Pidgin is a program for chatting with friends from the computer, which unifies all the various chats including that of Facebook.
10) Mendeley, for Windows and Mac PC is a program for organizing pdf documents .
11) Express Scribe is a program for transcribing audio recordings in a fast way, very useful for university to take notes without running with the pen or keyboard behind the professor.
In addition you can also use Google Keep to transcribe the text in photos automatically
12) The calculator
In other articles we have seen many programs to have the calculator on the computer:
- Microsoft Mathematics: Calculator with graphs and automatic solver
- Scientific calculator, to solve equations, functions and math problems
- Programs to do exercises and problems of analysis, algebra, geometry
13) Music
Many students study with music in the background and there is nothing better than Spotify for PC and Mac to listen to automatic playlists of songs suitable for the study, all streaming and free
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