Software Recommendations For your PC or Laptop

Operating System:

• Windows: Microsoft Windows 7, or Windows 8 Professional (Home Editions may be acceptable if you'll be keeping your computer at home. ) We suggest using 64-bit versions as opposed to 32-bit versions where feasible. Key issues to consider: 1) Older (often 16-bit) software may require the 32-bit O/S. 2) Newer software versions being released now and in the future may require a 64-bit O/S.
• Mac: Mac OS X 10.7 or 10.8 (Lion, Mountain Lion)
• Linux: RedHat Enterprise Linux 5 or newer, or other currently supported variants, such as CentOS-5.
• For all operating systems, you should regularly apply the most recent security patches.
• 

Productivity Software:

• Win/Mac: Microsoft's Office suite - Office 2010 (Windows), Office 2013 (Windows), Office 2011 (MacOS), is widely used.
  Office 2003 will be phased out by April, 2014. 
  Note: Word Perfect is an acceptable alternative within some departments, but MS-Word is the preferred document format for sharing documents between departments. Some units have reported positive experiences with the OpenOffice.org suite.

Email:

• All: Webmail, UCI Gmail
• Windows: Thunderbird, Microsoft Outlook 2010, Outlook 2013, Outlook Express
  Macintosh: Mail (included with O/S), Thunderbird, or Outlook 2011
• Many departments utilize centralized Email; please check with your Computer Support Coordinator

Internet Tools:

• Win/Mac:
• Browsers: Mozilla Firefox 23.01 or later, Safari 5.x, Internet Explorer 9.x (with latest patches) or later, Chrome 29.x.
  Supported Web Browsers 
• Telnet: puTTY, SecureCRT SSH Tectia, dataComet
• File Transfers: WinSCP, dataComet (Mac), sftp (bundled with Linux). The use of standard, unencrypted FTP is discouraged for security reasons.

File Exchange Format:

• Text: ASCII, MS-Word (.doc) , RTF 
• Graphics: TIFF, GIF, JPEG, PNG image formats 
• Video: MPEG, QuickTime 
• Mail: MIME
• Archives: BinHex, Stuffit (Mac); ZIP, Auto-extract (PC)