Google’s Latest Bundle of Goodies Is Worth Opening
Rob Pegoraro writes here at the Washington Post website: Last month, it introduced a free bundle of Windows XP software called Google Pack. This collection — labeled "beta" like many Google offerings but presented largely as a finished product — combines Web, security and multimedia programs from Google and other firms with a Google Updater application to herd all this software onto a computer and keep it current afterwards.
The Pack ( http://pack.google.com/ ) consists of five Google programs (Google Earth, Google Desktop, the Picasa photo organizer, the Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer and the new Google Pack Screensaver), a version of Mozilla Firefox with the Google Toolbar built in, the Ad-Aware SE Personal spyware remover, a copy of Symantec’s Norton AntiVirus 2005 SE that includes six months of updates and Adobe Reader 7. You can also remove any of these components or add any of four optional ingredients — the Google Talk and Trillian instant messengers, RealPlayer and a gallery of art images to use as desktop backgrounds or screensaver images — before beginning the download.