Google Pack

Last week I posted about the rumours the Google were intending to release a no-frills personal computer running a Google OS. Well it seems those were unfounded rumours, although what Google did release was the Google Pack.

Google Pack is a free collection of essential software from Google and other companies. The software in the Google Pack helps you browse the web faster, remove spyware and viruses, organize your photos, and more.
Google Press Release

The pack includes such useful apps as Firefox, Ad-Aware, and RealPlayer. Now I am slightly worried about RealPlayer being included. RealPlayer as we all know is Beelzebub’s software, but lets leave that rant for another day.

Also included is Google’s Picasa the Photo organiser, (which I use to generate the gallery on this site), and various other bits and bobs from Google. The Google screen saver is quite nice, although it brands your screen with “Google” in the top right. So why not go to Amit Agarwal’s blog and get the fiddled version without the logo :D It’s worth getting as the screen saver is probably the best piece of software in the entire Google Pack. The screensaver displays a slide show of your digital pictures full screen or as a collage. Also included is Google Desktop. This is scary, it sits on your PC downloading things, indexing your emails… no I don’t like this at all. It also puts personalised adverts on your computer as a popup- I will not tolerate adverts on my computer… in my browser? Well I have put a stop to that, but sneaking themon my desktop… no-no no.

Anyway, Google are on probation with me for the time being- they are damn good at searching the Internet, and Gmail is a dream to use… but they are getting scary like Microsoft.