Shengliver’s Note: Thanks to today’s technology, you can build your laptop into a library, a workshop, and a communicative platform.
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OS
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Windows 11
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Win 11 is Microsoft’s most beautiful, efficient and stable OS.
The operating system Win 11 allows a user to switch between languages for its interface display. Go to Windows Settings, where the Language button enables you to pick a default system language (English) you desire.
With robust hardware in place and the right settings on, the system is capable of looking after itself, saving you a lot of pain.
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Utilities
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Although Adobe Flash Player has been terminated by Adobe, a lot of great legacy apps still depend on it to run.
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a platform where some great apps run
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zip and unzip
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Search
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hard disk file search: anything and everything
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Search for words in files.
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its plug-ins and software support
Many media apps like Adobe Premiere and Audition need QuickTime to function.
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lite media player; open source; started by French student communities
This media player allows you to play virtually media files of all formats, from any source, local, stream, podcast, hyperlink, or CD/DVD drive.
With a plain interface, VLC player looks rather simplistic. Its beauty, however, lies beneath its surface. Once you delve under the hood, you will be able to record, clip, convert, and even repair media files, apart from customisation.
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VPN
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A VPN service is a must to unblock the Web. National governments in some cases block each other for various reasons.
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Google Chrome
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Chrome is the best Web browser for its speed and versatility.
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Downloaders
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Internet Download Manager is a direct downloader. With it, you can grab virtually any element off a webpage, or even an whole website.
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uTorrent works with BT files.
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Emule, which has been running since 2002, is a veteran file sharing beast. Through it, web users can share their files with the entire online global community.
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Reading Apps
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Sumatra PDF is a lite lightning-speed PDF reader of text and images. To read a multimedia PDF file, you would still need to run Adobe Reader or Acrobat.
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Adobe Digital Editions is Adobe’s viewer of epub books.
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Mobipocket Reader is a great alternative to more popular digital reading apps. It opens mobi books.
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Office
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Organiser
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Calendar (win store app)
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Mail (win store app)
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Microsoft To-Do (win store app)
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Microsoft Office
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The Ubiquitous Office Suite
Word Processing, Data Management and Presentation
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Microsoft Student
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A Great Companion to MS Office
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DTP and Multimedia Authoring
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Screen Capture, AV Editing and e-Learning Producer
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The Most Popular Mind Mapping Tool on the Planet
Its free version is good enough to meet your everyday mind mapping needs.
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Use English
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Reading
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a one-stop solution to eBooks; news and eBook manager; one of a kind
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Writing
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Open Live Writer (Win Store App)
blog writer and publisher; process rich contents; more than text
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Talking
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Paltalk
Go meet the world!
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Comprehension
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Grover Podcast (Win Store App)
A Windows Store App, simple to use, clean interface, access to podcasts from anywhere
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Encyclopaedias
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Encyclopaedia Britannica
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Encyclopaedia Britannica Library
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Britannica Student Library
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Britannica Elementary Library
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World Book
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Education is World Book’s commitment and its editorial team is World Book’s strength. Each team member is dedicated to producing accurate and unbiased information by utilising contemporary technological tools and following traditional practices of editorial excellence.
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Lexicons
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LDOCE
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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
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OALD
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Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary
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Longman Pronouncing Dictionary
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It models British and American pronunciations. Virtually all words including proper nouns are pronounced.
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Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary
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Cambridge is a big name.
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Macmillan English Dictionary 2.0
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It has won several awards for its user-friendliness and innovations. This precious reference tool has stopped the circulation of its software edition. All the contents are now web-based.
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Collins COBUILD 3.0
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old but resourceful; plain interface
It incorporates Thesaurus, Grammar, Usage, and a mini corpus; newer versions do not beat this one.
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Merriam-Webster’s Advanced Learner’s English Dictionary
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It marks the beginning of a new kind of publishing for Merriam-Webster. Great examples.
This dic is the only one in an eBook format in the category of Lexicons. All the others are apps.
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Concise Oxford English Dictionary
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quick word finder; click and show; easy reference and lucid definitions; best reading companion
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Oxford Talking Dictionary
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New Shorter Oxford
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Oxford English Dictionary
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accepted authority on the evolution of the English language over the last millennium; old and new; scholastic
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Chambers on CD-ROM
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its way to define
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American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
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guidance toward accuracy, precision, and grace in the use of English that intelligent people need and seek
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Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate, Thesaurus & Unabridged
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Its plug-in works with MS Word. Collegiate, Thesaurus and Unabridged apps, installed in one folder, run as an ensemble. It is the most trusted American lexicon for its exhaustive definitions.
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Merriam-Webster Visual Dictionary
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Merriam Webster’s visual approach to words with audio
Thanks to a Chinese developer, you could run the online dic from your local disk. Human experiences are categorised and each category branches out further.
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Visual Thesaurus
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a word web; it runs on Java; word associations
The company has stopped selling its standalone app. All the contents are accessed through a subscription on its website.
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an Israeli app; instant and enormous references
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Exams
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Longman Exams Coach
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Practice in all major English language proficiency tests is found on the app.
LEC goes far beyond exams. There is a grammar handbook, a writing manual, and two dictionaries built in it as well.
Longman iBT prepares you exclusively for the TOEFL.
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Longman iBT
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Vocabulary Builder
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Oxford Word Magic
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basic English vocabulary
images, stories, and games
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Oxford Picture Dictionary Interactive
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word families, images, sounds, and games / American pronunciations
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ware by a Polish developer, whose running is based on the forgetting curve
Machines can help the human mind memorise words faster.
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Skills
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Rosetta Stone is the best way to learn a foreign language. The award-winning language solution combines proven learning methods with the world’s best speech recognition technology.
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Auralog / Tell Me More
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Auralog was a French company, which created the computer program, Tell Me More. The program was very well received in language learner circles the wold over. Unfortunately, Auralog has been annexed by RS for unknown reasons.
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References
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Grammar and Usage
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Cambridge Grammar of English on CD-ROM (Ronald Carter; Michael McCarthy)
All examples are audible. It is unique in that it runs as a program. Most grammars are presented in a book format.
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Longman English Grammar (L G Alexander)
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A Practical English Grammar (A J Thomson; A V Martinet)
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Practical English Usage (Michael Swan)
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Kenkyusha Dictionary of English Collocations
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Webster’s Dic of English Usage
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Modern English Usage (Fowler)
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American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage & Style
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A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech and Svartvik)
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The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (Rodney Huddleston, Geoffrey K. Pullum)
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The Right Word at the Right Time
A guide to the English language and how to use it
The Reader’s Digest Association Limited
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Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA)
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National Geographic Complete DVDs
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View all the issues from 1 to now. It runs on Adobe Air. The quality journal covers more than matters of geographical interest. Over a century’s publications are at your fingertips once you have the program running on your PC.
Regrettably NG has terminated the sale of this product, claiming that it has been obsoleted by evolving tech since its launch.
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essence of the English language and its literature, and more; translations of major non-English works from other cultures like Russia, Germany, and France / Fudan University Press
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The Five-Foot Shelf of Books
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An Education in P2P
A forum where world-class documentaries are available.
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Part of Z-Library project. The world’s largest eBook library
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Videos lessons where you learn from the best teachers of a field
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BT Forums
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Digital Archives
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collections of books, audio and video files, and apps
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Shengliver Studio 
[…] a digital edition of OALD 9 and investigate it personally someday. I will not revise my blog entry Guide to a Linguistic PC this time for its sake. As I revealed in one of our exchanges, all the items listed in the entry […]