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Open Source Software
WYSIWYG Editors: for websites I tried
NVU and KompoZer fried my website... so
I'm sticking with Expression Web for now
Printing to PDF: why waste paper? I have tried a few different programs, but PrimoPDF wins.
It's not right that Adobe can charge $600+ for a program to print to PDF files! Save
paper, save toner/ink, save your printer, save money if nothing else.
Email and Web Browsing: I've had my parents on Thunderbird and
Firefox for so long they are lost without them. I added
Sunbird calendar to my Thunderbird... it worked nicely for a couple days and I was
impressed, then it started asking me for passwords to calendars I didn't have. It also crashed a lot more often than Outlook did. I'm also unable to
sync my cell with Tbird or Sbird. If I had to, I could use it... but I'm not there yet.
OpenOffice: It really does look a
lot like Microsoft Office. But... it doesn't act like it all the time. I was unable to properly print an envelope. Excel worked nearly exactly the same,
I was impressed. But Word/Writer is basically used by me to print envelopes... nothing much more. So, I uninstalled it... maybe a future
version will work for me.
FileZilla: This is no
WS_FTP but I'm still using it because I'm currently using Vista Ultimate and it doesn't like WS_FTP. It has its
issues and bugs, but for the most part it works. It does not do multiple connections or tabbed ftp'ing.
7zip: compression utility, replaced
WinRar which in turn replaced WinZip. I am very happy with this
software, it's faster and squishes most things down a bit more than a rar will go. I'm very happy with it, yes, I said it twice.
Instant Messaging: I'm disappointed with Yahoo's linux
version of its messenger, but Pidgin is useable. It's about the plainest IM client I've seen to date. Now I can't
even find the link to YM, but found it
here. You can also use Gaim...
Audio Editing: Audacity, I've only
made a few clips with this program but it looks like a real beast of a program... especially for the price (free). I've recently cut a bunch of mp3
discs up with it, those are the single mp3 that someone lazily put the entire CD into. A 50 minute mp3 track is lame. It did a wonderful job at
slicing up that single mp3, a lot of work though.
Video Editing : VirtualDub has always served me
well. GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) has a lot of great features, it's not entirely user friendly still,
but neither is Photoshop. This program is somewhere between
Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop.
Corel bought out Jasc and now it takes a long time to load.
Computer Maintenance: JkDefrag is an excellent
defragger, and CCleaner is an excellent crap cleaner (yes, that's what the extra C is supposedly for),
also Defraggler, also by Piriform, is an excellent file
defragmenter. After running CCleaner, then Defraggler, and then JkDefrag this computer runs almost as well as my desktop computer does. Free is good,
in fact, it's better than the paid-for stuff.
Anti-Virus: I installed Avast antivirus on my aunt's
computer... it's picked up a few things so far. I don't know how good or bad it is at the moment.
Audio-Video Viewing:
VLC media player seems to play just about any song or video ever created. I use this on both
Linux and Windows. It's a nice player, dump Windows Media Player (WMP, sounds like WiMP) and install this instead...
I need a webcam proggy for multiple cameras... if you happen to know of one that's stable, please let me know!
I hope this review of software is helpful.
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