Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen

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Google Pack

Posted 2006-01-07 12:00 AM in Musings | Tools.

Via Greg, Google's released the Google Pack, a nice collection of fairly established software along with their own updater. I think this would be great for my mom, although RealPlayer is Satan.

Adobe Reader 7 (Evil: Use Foxit)
Ad-Aware SE Personal (Iffy: Use SpyBot)
GalleryPlayer HD Images
Google Desktop
Google Earth
Google Pack Screensaver (NICE: This is a VERY nice Photo Screensaver that is multi-monitor aware!)
Google Picasa Photo Organizer/Editor
Google Talk (Eh, not so much: Use Skype)
Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer
Google Video player
Mozilla Firefox with Google Toolbar (Nice way to proliferate Firefox by including it)
Norton AntiVirus 2005 Special Edition (Cheesy way to bait and switch with a 6-month "Trial" subscription.") WARNING: This one installs without asking. Not cool. You can uninstall stuff for the "Installed Software" Tab.
RealPlayer (Satan: This is how the devil gets your immortal soul, it starts with RealPlayer...)
Trillian (Ok, but I'm using MSN Messenger Beta 8...we'll see....)

It's easy to see where this is going, of course, as Google will likely start charging for the prime real estate on their own Add/Remove Programs page. Still, I dig it, and I hope it starts serving up a bunch of Open Source software. This may turn out to be a standard thing I will install on my relatives machines.

Now playing: Freshlyground - Mowbray Kaap

Tracked by:
"Google Pack (the road Linux for all in 2008?)" (Paul Lockwood's Mostly .Net Blo... [Trackback]
http://www.dotnetworkaholic.com/Google+Pack+The+Road+Linux+For+All+In+2008.aspx [Pingback]
"Google Pack (all proles on Linux by 2010?)" (Paul Lockwood's Mostly .Net Blog) [Trackback]
http://www.dotnetworkaholic.com/Google+Pack+All+Proles+On+Linux+By+2010.aspx [Pingback]
"Google's Pack Comes with Evil" (TraviBlog) [Trackback]
"Google Pack" (ctype(yourBrain, myBrain)) [Trackback]
http://hal.lco.net/Google+Pack.aspx [Pingback]
http://techhash.com/blog/2006/01/12/somebody-give-google-money/ [Pingback]

Saturday, January 07, 2006 12:34:54 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Google Pack allows one to choose the software required before downloading. So If you don't need Norton Antivirus just deselect that from the list before downloading Pack.

Krishna

Saturday, January 07, 2006 12:45:15 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Krishna, I tried to do that, but some how ended up with EVERYTHING installing immediately. Not sure how that happened.

Scott Hanselman

Saturday, January 07, 2006 3:21:37 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Scott, I was wondering what the two extra icons are for on title bar of your window in the screenshot? Are they from some other tool you have installed?

Eric

Saturday, January 07, 2006 10:50:28 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Eric, those are from Ultramon from Realtimesoft.com. They are for moving windows between monitors.

Scott Hanselman

Saturday, January 07, 2006 3:09:44 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

I use Spybot and Adaware. It works great that way. I wish they would have included OpenOffice in the pack. I was definitely surprised to see RealPlayer in the pack.

Megan

Saturday, January 07, 2006 11:51:33 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

I happened to use Google Pack yesterday and it was great to find Google Pack Screensaver. My wife likes it too because it shows the pics we take and pops them up all over the monitors. That's right, it's multi monitor aware. I got two monitors, and it pops it up quite nicely between both monitors.