That's why the architects of the education 2.0 model predict that traditional universities will find themselves on the wrong side of history, alongside newspaper chains and record stores. "If universities can't find the will to innovate and adapt to changes in the world around them," professor David Wiley of Brigham Young University has written, "universities will be irrelevant by 2020."

If you buy or reinstall a new PC, you want it to be productive right now. In addition to the OS, you want a basic tool-set of low cost applications and no-compromises. This entry is the first of a series of articles on which we aim to offer application tool-sets tailored for specific needs.

This first entry focuses on 'core' applications used in general by most consumer and small business users. Please visit us again for other interesting editions.

1. Office Suite - We had already commented on the word processors on a previous article, but we cannot mention core applications without covering and office suite. If you want the leading edge technology, we recommend OpenOffice (Windows, Mac, Linux). However, if the potential of corporate backed support is important for you, then you should look to IBM's Lotus Symphony (Windows, Mac, Linux). Notice that in both applications we recommend using the word processor, spreadsheet and presentations applications only. The Drawing application is not to the level of specialized tools.
2. Images - Use Irfanview (Windows only) for simple image viewing, cropping, reizing and image format conversion (90% of what we do with an image is one of these). Together with the Plugins, it can read and convert to almost every image format under the sun. You might want to use Aviary Phoenix (Windows, Mac, Linux) for actual image editing. Notice that Aviary Phoenix is a web application. However, we are including it here because no other free desktop application provides this type of simple and powerful editing.
3. Notes taking (journal) - Evernote (Windows, Max, iPhone and Linux via web) is the best tool in this area as it seamlessly synchronizes your desktop notes with the web, and make them available in your iphone whenever you need them.
4. PDF management - Generate your PDf files by printing using the doPDF (Windows). Then, open them using PDF-XChange Viewer, which is more powerful than Adobe Reader.
5. Video and multimedia player - VLC (Windows, Mac, Linux) plays almost every video and audio format, in addition to supporting several multimedia tricks. It can even load subtitles from a text file, and be controlled via ethernet from another computer (for Home Automation).
6. IM Client - If you need to stay communicated with partners, customers and others, Pidgin (Windows, Mac, Linux) might be the best solution for you. Pidgin supports connecting several social protocol and servers (Gtalk, Yahoo!, etc).
7. Social Clients - TwitterDeck and Seesmic are both very good tools to monitor and post into both, Twitter and Facebook accounts. These two applications require the installation of Adobe AIR (Windows, Max, Linux).

This list the roundup of core office tools. Notice that we tried to be as platform independent as possible, as you do not need to be locked into a specific OS to be productive.

Do you have other favorite applications? Please register and let us know via the comments below.