Application Software

This year I have used Publisher, Word and Excel. All of these were Microsoft Office 2010.

Word is primarily used for word processing, entering and formatting text, but can also be used for creating simple charts. Some of the key features include text size, different fonts and colours, entering text, symbols and numbers, spell check, different page layouts and inserting pictures and graphs.

Publisher is very similar to word but is mainly used for desktop publishing, creating newsletters and such things where formatting is important and text is used in more than one place. Publisher has text boxes as the main formatting tool but also text size, different fonts and colours, entering text, symbols and numbers, spell check, different page layouts and inserting pictures and graphs.

Excel is used for creating spreadsheets. It is primarily used for entering numbers or data and creating charts, graphs, doing basic and difficult calculations. It can also alphabetically or numerically order data. Although you can enter text into Excel it would be very hard to format it.

Each of these applications has specific features that make them easier to use when you are trying to do a specific task.

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Word is word processing application that is used to write documents like letters or essays where text formatting is very essential to provide a printable document that can be read very easily. Excel, on the other hand, is a spreadsheet application where you can input data in tables in the pattern you choose. From the table, you can deduce or calculate how the information is related to each other and you can even create graphs to visually represent the said relationship.

Both applications can create printable documents and it is therefore possible to use one to simulate the function of the other to some extent. You can insert tables in a Word document or write whole paragraphs inside a single Excel cell. But each application has strengths that makes them well suited to the tasks they perform. The font, paragraph, and page formatting options of Word makes it easy to create documents that are free flowing and conversational, which is quite difficult in Excel. A feature of Excel that a lot of users find to be very convenient is its ability to analyse and compute formulas and conditional statements. This capability allows users to create pre-formatted documents that only need certain data and derives the rest. This can be as simple as the sum of all the entered data, taking their average, to even more complex equations. You would not find this type of capability within Word. (Difference Between Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word)

This article says that although the applications are interchangeable they all have their strengths and weaknesses and unique features that make them better for certain tasks.

You can integrate these strengths though, for example you could create a graph or chart in Excel and then copy and paste it into a Word or Publisher document.

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Commercial Software: • Must purchase and have a license, e.g.; Microsoft Office, Adobe Master Collection, Norton Anti-Virus

Shareware: • Usually distributed on the Internet and it has a low cost or free e.g.; Scratch, Gimp, some anti-viruses • Beware, some free applications have Viruses • Public Domain Software - Open source

It is important when installing software that you know what it is and that it isn’t goiing to harm you computer. (Have viruses) If you are buying software, make sure that you buy it from an authorised reseller to insure that it isn’t pirated.
Operating Systems

At school we use Windows 7 Professional:

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At home I use Windows 7 Home Premium:

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An operating system is what controls everything, it is what starts up the computer, installs updates, it starts up the different applications,