IBRAHIM AHMAD WORLD

Yep this is KHTP Business Centre. Just opposite of KHTP Techno Centre. Once or twice a day I walk to this building. Either for breakfast or went to the main office at level 3. If have meetings or just to go there to say hi! to the other office mate.

The most prominent office space inside this building is Maybank (bank), Applied Materials,  Asiaco Movers Sdn Bhd , ASML Equipment Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Asyst Technologies,  Aviza Technologies Sdn Bhd, Basis Bay Sdn Bhd, Hermes Epitek, KLA Tencor(M) Sdn Bhd, Novellus System, Siegle + Epple, WaferGen Biosystems (M) Sdn. Bhd. and few other new companies.

This like the town center for Kulim Hi-Tech Park. Not much traffic here. Only sometimes in the morning at the Butterworth-Kulim Expressway (BKE) junction to Kulim Hi-Tech. Where everybody is catching to punch in.

Often when we bought a new PC or notebooks they come with the basic configurations and settings, basic office softwares, games etc. We will requiring the software once we want to use it for a certain function or received certain files and we need to open it. Then you will spend time to find it. Well see no further, this is a newbie list for softwares that you should have inside your new PC or notebooks.

1. ANTIVIRUS
   • AVG Antivirus – Free but so, so. The free version is not that powerful. A lot of spywares and trojans are not detected. Certain new virus cannot be killed. They will be moved to the quarantine area. Anyway there is a buy version  which have the additional root kit scan, download scan, search scan, surf scan and free support of course.
   • AVIRA Antivirus – Free version. Usable but weak againts kiling virus. They will move it to the vault to be quarantined.
   • Kaspersky Antivirus ** – Free trial version (30 days trial). Second best antivirus for year 2008. I like this one. The free trial and the buy version have the same capabilities. I like the godzilla sound when they detect a virus, spywares and trojans. Give you the sense of yeaah  killed that monster kinda feeling. The price also cheap. Around RM70 in Malaysia and can be as low as RM30. Worth the the money, less headache. Don’t download the pirated version though. You might end up formating your PC. And one more thing, one antivirus for one PC, if not it will slow down your computer instead. Top ten Antivirus.
2. SPYWARE REMOVEL
   • Spybot Search  & Destroy ** – I have been using it quite a number of years. Sometimes antivirus couldn’t find what this guy have found. Can be set to run  at the Windows start up. Not for me anyway. I just used it when I need it.  I’m running quite a few intensive memory crunching softwares. I need the productivity of the processor and memory. Definition updates regularly.
   • Lavasoft Ad-Aware – Free version. They also have the buy version.  I have been using it quiet a few years until Spybot came along.

3. SPEED IMPROVE AND REGISTRY CLEANER
   • CCleaner ** – Free. Very useful indeed. When you install and uninstall programs, quite few files are left out by programs. Sometimes these left out files will slow down the performance of your PC. CCleaner will clean all kinds of temporary files and clear your PC registry of unneccesary entries which slug your PC down.
4. INTERNET BROWSER
   • Mozilla Firefox **- Free.  My personal preference. There is a lot of plug-ins that can make your work more productive with Firefox.  The ones that I personally found useful is the Foxmarks plug-in. It is a bookmark plug-in. It can save your bookmark and can be loaded and syncronized between more than one PC. This is due to sometimes I’m using a notebook and sometimes PC. It is very convinient to have the same bookmark on both without the hasstle of copying the browser’s bookmark.
   • There is a lot of other internet browsers eg. Google Chrome,   Apple Safari, Opera, Flock and few others that maybe you have never heard of like Avant, Deepnet Explorer, Phaseout, Maxthon or Songbird. I’ll use Internet Explorer if the website use .NET scripts. Not very fond of IE, I guess.
5. IMAGE/ PICTURE  VIEWER
   • Google Picasa ** – Free.  Definitely you will acquire this software. A software to view images or pictures. Worth having because it is free. Pictures loading seems fast and smooth. Very easy to use.
6. EMAIL CLIENT
   • Outlook Express  – Free. Comes free with any version of Windows OS.  Can be installed from the Windows OS CD or from the Add/ Remove Programs of  Control Panel. Can be used to read google Gmail, Yahoo email, Hotmail and various other POP3 email services provider.
   • Mozilla Thunderbird ** – Free. I like this one because it have a bundle of plug-ins that can be installed with this email client. Even they have created a portable verson for this. Easy to bring and run you email client  every where on an external hard disk. No need to bring the notebook.
7. OFFICE PRODUCTIVITY TOOLS
   • Openoffice ** – Free.  This one will save your budget. No need to buy the MS Office suite. It can read and write to MS Office format without much problem. Some of the suites are compatible with gmail documents.
8. CHAT TOOLS
   • Yahoo Messengger ** – Free. No doubt about it. Almost every one using. It is fun and intuitive.  They call YM for short.
9. VIDEO PLAYER
   • Windows Media Player Classic ** – Free. Of course if you purchase a new PC or notebook, you will want to see movies or that video from your weddings, friends etc. Also you want to download the video codecs from the same page to view different format videos.
   • VLC Media Player ** – Free.  Another worth mentioning media player. Both are excellant media players anyway.
10. MP3 PLAYER
    • Winamp **  – Free. An oldie. Of course your new notebooks or PC has a sound card and speakers. You can test with this one. It can play videos also but sometimes it is not a good idea. Come a time the video cannot be played because imcompatible codecs. Stick to playing MP3 only.

There is a lot more free stuff. Most of them are open source and free. However this is more to my preference because when dealing with my clients I will advice them to install or I will install it for them.  I will  try to list down all the open source softwares somewhere in the open source category. Till then, I’m going to sleep. yawn..

This is Techno Centre of KHTP. This is the place where I’m currently working at. Unfortunately no label lah for the building. Anyway it is recognizable. It is just beside to another building which houses Maybank.

The building has a lot of office spaces and incubator room. Still have a few more spaces for rent. And one more thing, Kulim Hi-Tech is gazzete as a “MSC Cybercity”.  Companies which have so called “MSC status”  will get incentives for staying in Kulim Hi-Tech.  http://www.mscmalaysia.my

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