You Need A Budget keeps a running tab of your monthly expenditures in dozens of categories. Though Quicken (starts at $30) is desktop software and Mint is a free Web-based service, both offerings are go-to resources for budgeting, and both come from the same company: Intuit. Incumbents: Intuit Quicken and Intuit Mint.You can stream audio and video in presentations, and create presentations collaboratively. It’s easy to use, and you can export creations as PowerPoint files or PDF files. Part of the browser-based Glide desktop operating system (free with 30GB of storage, or $50 a year with 250GB), Glide Presenter works in a slide-by-slide format. Like PowerPoint, TransMedia’s Glide Presenter adopts a slide-by-slide approach to creating presentations. Signing up for the pro version of Prezi ($59 a year) entitles you to download Prezi Desktop, and you work on presentations locally. zip file, extract it, and play it locally using the included prezi.exe file. When it’s time to give the presentation, you can play the show online (it’s Flash-based) or download a. Prezi is collaborative, so multiple users can work on the same presentation simultaneously via Prezi Meeting.

The process may seem strange at first, but Prezi’s tutorials and inline help will get you up to speed in a hurry. Instead of being slide-based, Prezi uses a single-pane approach. The free, public (and Web-only) version lets you create arguably better presentations than PowerPoint can deliver. Easily the most interesting alternative to PowerPoint, Prezi has both local and online components. Prezi’s singlepane approach to creating presentations can take some getting used to, but the finished results can be remarkably effective. The application is so dominant that the phrase “send me the PowerPoint” has become ubiquitous in business circles. The 600-pound gorilla in the world of presentations is Microsoft’s PowerPoint (available as a component of various Microsoft Office bundles or separately for $140).

Our category coverage invites you to consider the pros and cons of each type of contender: incumbents, up-and-comers, and Web apps. In each instance, we identified the dominant program, a promising challenger, and (where applicable) an online alternative. PCWorld examined software tools for handling 11 categories of common (and essential) PC tasks: presentations, financial planning, note taking, file management, photo editing, email, word processing, music organizing, remote access, cleanup/optimization, and backup. Sometimes, switching to a new application can help you speed up your work or make your system more efficient. Illustration by Anders WenngrenA computer is only as useful as the software you run on it, so you should keep your PC’s software current–and not necessarily with the latest version of a program that’s getting long in the tooth.

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