PC Software Commercial Productivity Applications

There are a great many applications that can be run on the typical PC. Some come bundled with the operating system, while others are downloaded from an App Store, and still others are downloadable directly from a website. Let's call them desktop applications.

Then, there is another type of application that is run within a web browser. Basically, in your web browser you would navigate to a particular website, and start using the site as a full-blown application. Let's call them web-based applications.

Desktop applications take up physical disk space on your computer.  There are many types of downloadable applications, including office productivity, games, photography, security, and communications.  Let's take a closer look at the office productivity applications as an example.

For the desktop, the most popular office productivity application suite on the planet is Microsoft 365.  It includes a word processor called Word, and a spreadsheet application called Excel.  Other modules comprise the suite, but these are the most popular by far.  It can be purchased from the Microsoft website for both Windows PCs and Macs.   

Apple provides a similar suite of office productivity applications, bundled with its macOS operating system.  Pages is the name of the word processor, and Numbers is the name of the spreadsheet application.  There is no charge to use these applications.  But they are not as powerful and functional as the Microsoft suite.  Regardless, I find them very useful, and often use them myself.

Web-based applications reside in the cloud. Web-based applications have a number of advantages over traditional desktop apps, most prominently their portability. With web-based apps, users don’t have to install additional software, and developers don’t have to write multiple versions of the same application for different operating systems.  Web-based applications often follow a subscription model for payment.  This means that you pay a fee periodically (monthly or yearly) to license the software. 

For individual users, Google provides a free suite of applications for word processing, spreadsheets, and of course email, and some free storage on its cloud servers to store your documents. Microsoft offers its suite on the web too, but it is not free!

Probably the largest use of web-based applications on a PC involves social media (like Facebook), entertainment (like Netflix) and shopping (like Amazon). 

This is a large topic, but I think the above gives you an idea of what applications are and what types of applications are available for your typical personal computer.  It all gets much more complicated in an office setting.  In class, we can discuss that further if you are interested in a deeper dive.