Best Software for Netbooks

June 23, 2009 By Nick Mokey

Music, Video and Photo

Don’t swamp your netbook with a different player for every video codec when VLC will play them all, and with a tiny footprint.

WinAmp Media Player, Free

Forget iTunes on a netbook. It eats up a nice chunk of memory and tries to junk up your PC with the likes of QuickTime and Safari, too. WinAmp imposes far less of a load and won’t try to drag along any filthy friends, either.

Google Picasa, Free

Most netbooks really don’t have too much spare hard drive for storing loads of photos, so getting them off your netbook quickly and on to the Web just makes sense. Google’s Picasa photo suite makes it simple to organize and upload your photos to online galleries quickly and painlessly.

XBMC XBMC

Want to use your netbook as an impromptu home media server for streaming YouTube, Hulu, and other Internet-based video content? XBMC offers a slick interface that makes it easier to browse through and play shows and movies, without sucking up a lot of system resources. Note that most netbooks still won’t be able to drive video at high resolutions (like 1080p), though.

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Showing 11 comments

Netbookfiles.com at 3:06am 7th May 2010 no one mentioned about my netbook software site guys!

Please do check it out : http://www.netbookfiles.com

We have put a lot of man-hours into this.
Seriously at 9:58am 11th February 2010 Seriously...a statement like that... you should not be allowed to own a computer.
yoseff at 7:05pm 28th January 2010 definetley chrome over firefox. mozilla offers all of the plugs for html junkies and rss, but on a notebook, chrome is simply... simple.
woodyman11 at 7:45am 27th January 2010 i am not joking you guys these games are fine but why dont you download the project64k emulator and then you can play great games like zelda, goldeneye and mariokart etc.... and ohh thats right they are free too enjooooooooy!!!!!1
woodyman11 at 7:45am 27th January 2010 i am not joking you guys these games are fine but why dont you download the project64k emulator and then you can play great games like zelda, goldeneye and mariokart etc.... and ohh thats right they are free too enjoooooooooooy!!!!!1
Ian Bell at 8:57am 7th December 2009 Are you kidding me? Of course it is.
popo at 1:33am 7th December 2009 openoffice is not lighter than office 2007.
dang at 1:31am 25th November 2009 VLC player is pretty awesome
chris at 1:28am 25th November 2009 My favorite is the VCL player http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-windows.html
Chris at 1:26am 25th November 2009 I'd like to add IRFAN as a phantastic, lean grafic viewer with the essential functions of cropping, resizing, adjusting pictures etc. http://www.irfanview.com/

Also, using Firefox with the plugins Fireshot for screenshots, cooliris and coolpreviews really helps.
czechod at 11:12am 20th November 2009 What's the best (free) software to play movies on a netbook? I installed Nero (8) but can't get any audio... ready to try something else. Suggestions?