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COMPUTERS
Favourite Software (pt 2) |
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| FAVOURITE SOFTWARE (pt 2) And It's All Free and can be used with Windows (XP) !! |
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TO REITERATE
- AVOID any
illegal, pirated
software from the well known and not-so-well known illegal,
peer-to-peer,
pirate software and music file-sharing sites such as Kazaa Limewire, Global Shre,
Morpheus and
Grokster etc etc etc. The software and music that you can
download from such sites (and there are many of them) will at best be
of poor quality and at worst infected with spyware and
viruses.
The programs that these illegal pirates use to offer their dubious
peer-to-peer file-sharing services will also irreparably damage your
own PC with all sorts of extremely harmful
software/viruses/spyware/adware/pop-ups etc. This practice IS
ILLEGAL and it is breaking somebody's copyright and robbing them of
their legitimate income. IT'S JUST NOT WORTH IT - SO KEEP
WELL
AWAY!
SAFE FREE SOFTWARE (Part Two) Why would you pay £255 to £355 for (a legal copy of) Microsoft Office® when there is a superb fully functional office suite available completely free of charge?? Why would you pay £100 or more for a photo editing program when there is a highly respected alternative completely free of charge? Why pay £40 for audio editing software when a good free version is available. Why put up with the total insecurity of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser when a much safer W3C compliant browser is available as a free download? You'd be a mug to pay, wouldn't you? When we say 'free' - we mean genuinely FREE - NOT stolen, ripped-off, pirated (copied from a mate) or otherwise dodgy!! Many of the programs that we are talking about are 'Freeware' programs - not cut-down versions of commercial software, not poorly functioning or time-limited trials. Others are programs provided by commercial companies who very generously offer some of their excellent software as 'freeware' i.e. free of charge to private, personal, non-commercial, not-for-profit computer users. Another type of so-called free software is 'Shareware'. Shareware can be downloaded free of charge, but only for evaluation. After a short time the user is morally obliged to pay the author for his software, time and effort. The paid for version may even include useful extra features. This type of software it still worth bearing in mind. Computer users may also stumble across 'Time Limited Demo's', these are programs that one can download free of initial charge for evaluation but that will stop working after a pre-determined period of, say, 28 days. Shareware is often very useful for evaluation, as are time-limited demos occasionally, but I try to avoid installing such software unless I really want it and am prepared to pay the author (who has worked hard to develop the software) for the privilege. It is also never a good idea to install too much software on your PC or, for that matter, constantly install and un-install software as it can cause problems to your system and certainly slow it down. So be warned! WHAT IS FREEWARE ? As mentioned previously, there are some generous commercial companies that offer some of their software free for personal use - the programming code will be secret and closed so that average users cannot change it. All Microsoft products are closed source for obvious profit motives. True freeware is often developed in a non-commercial environment by computer programmers in their own spare time which they then choose to offer free of charge to be downloaded, by anyone who wants it, over the internet. Some of this software can be deemed 'open-source' that is to say that the the the program is being developed by a 'community' of programmers and that the programming code is open for anyone to inspect and also, if they so choose, to change and improve. If someone does make changes to the source code then these changes must be made available to 'the community' of software developers to check and incorporate in future versions of the program. Open Source software is not licence free, but offered under the the terms of the GNU General Public Licence. As with most free software projects, donations are gratefully received. For this reason it is always good idea to download Freeware directly from the official website of the developers and not from a third party since in this case there could be a chance that the software may not be tested, have bugs in it or worse still be infected by a virus or spyware. So chose the official sites and respected 'mirror' sites for downloads. GNU/LINUX USERS All commercially available GNU/Linux distributions come with an amazing plethora of applications built in, and even the completely free down-loadable versions of this stable, secure, and open-source operating system come with more software than most people could ever use, and even if there is a particular application missing then it is usually a fairly simple matter to find a program to suit one's needs and download it for free. So on to more of this superb FREE software then! |
FIRST LET'S GET A SAFER WEB-BROWSER ! |
Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser contains a number of non compliant components that can make surfing the web a frustrating experience when the Windows operating system becomes infected with all sorts of unwanted 'malware' such as Spyware and Adware that can create many nasty and unwanted pop-ups, system slow-downs, instability and crashes. Certainly there are some websites that have exploited functionality around Microsoft's non-compliant standards, but 90 percent of the websites of the world do not need these controls, and using an alternative W3C compliant web browser is a much safer AND much more rewarding experience. So ditch the "Billy Gates Goes Off On A Tangent Browser" and try a safer alternative. My favourite browser is FIREFOX from the MOZILLA FOUNDATION - This is an Open Source freeware project. Firefox has Tabbed browsing once you've used tabbed browsing you'll wonder how you ever managed with the geriatric old Internet Explorer! Firefox also has a built-in pop-up stopper and RSS support and a built in Google search tool: My favourite is FIREFOX from the MOZILLA FOUNDATION : http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ FIREFOX is now in Version 2.0 (October 2006) and offers many improvements. ALTERNATIVE BROWSERS The original MOZILLA BROWSER come as part of a great suite of Open Source software and is a good alternative though without some of the excellent refinements of their FIREFOX alternative : http://www.mozilla.org/products/mozilla1.x/ I have not tried the following altenative browsers, but they are popular choices with enthusiasts. OPERA Browser: Opera is a popular alternative and like Firefox has tabbed browsing. http://www.opera.com/ Avant Browser. Like Firefox this has tabbed browsing and a built in search bar : http://www.avantbrowser.com |
Better E-MAIL SOFTWARE |
A much better alternative to Microsoft's Outlook Express, and an easier to use alternative to Microsoft's Outlook E-Mail clients is THUNDERBIRD from the MOZILLA FOUNDATION and is part of their Open Source project. THUNDERBIRD is certainly my favourite e-mail program, it is easy on the eye, easy to use, and has built in spam filtering, RSS support and, like FIREFOX, it's just brilliant and brilliantly simple! THUNDERBIRD from the Mozilla Foundation : http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/ ALTERNATIVE E-MAIL SOFTWARE The MOZILLA E-Mail client comes as part of the Open Source Mozilla Suite (1.7.*) which is freeware : http://www.mozilla.org/products/mozilla1.x/ It must be pointed out that the Mozilla Suite is no longer being developed by the Mozilla Foundation, development was discontinued in 2005. The Mozilla Suite included a Web Browser, E-Mail client and Composer - the web page creator. Work on this useful suite is being contined by a new organisation under the SeaMonkey name. SEAMONKEY: Continued development of the whole Mozilla Suite is now being undertaken by the SEAMONKEY project. See more at: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/ |
ORGANISER SOFTWARE |
If you need instand access to a calendar, or the ability to create and organise home and work schedules, here are some incredibly useful pieces of software: CALENDAR - Need to check a day and a date and don't have a traditional paper calendar or diary handy? Well Calendar is just the job! Calendar is the simplest of programs which can be installed on any PC or carried on your 'thumb drive' and makes it very easy to check any day and date! http://home.mnet-online.de/horst.muc/win/ UK's KALENDER - Even more comprehensive than the simple Calendar program above, UK's Kalender is a great little program that allows users to schedule in events just like a personal organiser. I use this every day, it is very useful, incredibly simple to use and easy to back-up and print out schedules. Brilliant! Download Kalender from Ulrich Krebs' home page http://www.8ung.at/ukrebs/ or from here: http://www.snapfiles.com/get/kalender.html SUNBIRD - From Mozilla. When I tried Sunbird it had not been released in its full version and was still 'work in progress'. It looked very nice and you may like it. Very usefully there is a portable version of Sunbird that can be stored and run from a USB 'thumb' drive. However I opted for UK's Kalendar (above) at that stage. Sunbird: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird/ Portable Sunbird : http://portableapps.com/apps/office/sunbird_portable Portable Apps: http://portableapps.com |
INSTANT MESSAGING SOFTWARE |
Many of us use MSN or AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) or ICQ or Yahoo Instant Messenger, but having four instant message programs open at once is a bit of a mess. I choose to use a program called TRILLIAN which can handle Instant Text Messaging from all of these accounts simultaneously - seriously brilliant! Trillian - From the commercial software company Cerulean Studios - they offer a "basic" (lite) version of Trillian as a freeware download : http://www.ceruleanstudios.com/ |
OFFICE SOFTWARE - Word Processor - Spreadsheet - Presentations and more . . . . free! |
For the general home user paying £250 to £350 for Microsoft Office is vastly expensive - even a hundred quid is a lot of money to write a letter or put some figures in columns! Even for many a business user Microsoft Office can be a serious and expensive overkill. Well how about a fully featured Office Suite for nothing? Sounds good. Well Open Office, from the highly respected Sun Microsystems, is available FREE and is an Open Source software project. The Open Office suite offers applications compatible with Microsoft Office file formats: WRITER - For word processing - compatible with Word CALC - For Spreadsheets - compatible with Excel IMPRESS - For making presentations - similar to PowerPoint BASE - for Databases - similar to Access DRAW - A 3D graphics program MATH - A program for mathematical equations Open Office can also create PDF files! OPEN-OFFICE is a serious program available to download for free - seriously! visit : http://www.openoffice.org ALTERNATIVE SOFTWARE: AbiWord - A free Word Processor, comprehensive enough for most needs - better than 'WordPad', though not as comprehensive as Open Office. A nice little Open Source program : http://www.abisource.com PDF's: I have not tried the following, as I use Open Office to create PDF files for free, but the software listed below is always highly recommended by enthusiasts: PDF CREATOR: Feeware PDF creation tool. Use it like a printer driver to convert your documents into PDF files. Can be downloaded for free from Sourceforge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/ CUTE PDF Writer - A freeware PDF production program : http://www.cutepdf.com PDF Redirect - A basic free version of 'paid for' professional software : http://www.exp-systems.com/PDFreDirect/ Might be handy, but you may be better off with Open Office 2.0 |
PHOTO EDITING SOFTWARE |
Now, you can pay tens, if not hundreds of pounds for commercial image editing software, but there's little excuse for parting with a single penny when photo editing software is as comprehensive as THE GIMP. GIMP is an open source image editing program often found on GNU/Linux distributions (operating systems). GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program (incidentally GNU stands for GNU's Not Unix and is the Free Software Foundation project that develops much Open Source software and utilities for use on GNU/Linux systems.) Luckily THE GIMP is written not only for GNU/Linux systems but also for MAC and Windows. Plug-ins are available to extend possibilities, but The GIMP supports highly advanced features such as histograms, colourtone shifts, gradation curves, alpha channels together with the more usual options of an image editor such as cropping, dodging, burning, paint, fill, text and layers etc. Oddly the various 'toolbars' that are used actually 'float' around the main image window on the desktop - something that one does get used to. THE GIMP - A comprehensive freeware image editing program : http://www.gimp.org ALTERNATIVE IMAGE EDITING SOFTWARE PhotoFiltre - a powerful and easy to use image viewer and editor : freeware : http://www.photofiltre.com |
AUDIO and AUDIO EDITING SOFTWARE |
HOME AUDIO RECORDING & EDITING For home recording enthusiasts there is little to bear the marvellous simplicity and excellence of the Open Source freeware program AUDACITY. As long as the PC has a suitable sound card fitted, AUDACITY can record from a microphone, Line In - i.e. a hi-fi system (cassette tape, vinyl record, radio tuner or minidisc etc) - or (with the what you hear function with a suitable sound card driver) from internet audio. Once recorded to the hard drive AUDACITY allows the audio to be edited, cut, paste, copied and effects added and then converted to MP3 , OGG VORBIS or WAV files. The "lame" component will need to be added to the program to enable it to convert to MP3, but that is explained on the Audacity website - it's VERY easy to do. AUDACITY - A fully featured audio recorder and editor - freeware : http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ AUDIOGRABBER - A CD Ripper - Rips to MP3 (with extra codec), OGG VORBIS, or WMA file formats. Also enables files to be tagged manually or via online database. Freeware : http://www.audiograbber.com-us.net RECORDING STREAMING AUDIO FROM THE WEB There are occasions when I want to record streaming audio from the web, such as internet radio stations using Real Player, QuickTime or Media Player plugins. This can be done using AUDACITY (above) or AUDIOGRABBER (above) if the sound card drivers for your PC has the option to select 'Record What You Hear' or 'Record Mixer in the recording properties of the audio controlpanel. If it is not possible to select What You Hear or Mixer within the recording properties (i.e. the driver for your sound card does not support this function) then there is a great little piece of software that installs its own alternative audio drivers that will allow you to record anything that you can hear coming from the speakers of your computer to an audio file such as MP3 - it is called TOTAL RECORDER from High Criteria software, and it is quite brilliant. However it is not free, but TOTAL RECORDER is worth the $17 if you need this functionality. http://www.highcriteria.com/ MORE AUDIO RELATED SOFTWARE CHEETAH AUDIO CONVERTER - Convert music files between MP3, OGG, WAV and WMA - this application can be downloaded from here : http://www.cheetahburner.com/ MP3 Tag Tools - Open Source MP3 Tag Editor available from : http://massid3lib.sourceforge.net/ MP3 Gain - Open Source Equalise MP3 sound volume (gain), available from : http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net/ ALTERNATIVE MEDIA PLAYERS ASHAMPOO MEDIA PLAYER + - Plays MP3, WMA, WAV, OGG VORBIS, AVI files and offers playlists and visualizations : http://www.ashampoo.com WINAMP - A 'cut down free' edition of Winamp is available for free download (handy if you need a good alternative media player), but the full featured version does cost some money. Might be worth a look though! : http://www.winamp.com/ Of course you can also try the free players form www.REAL.com and Apple's iTUNES too but these are commercial products utilising proprietory methods, which those who appreciate open-source software do not appreciate too much. |
POD-CASTING SOFTWARE |
JUICE - The Cross Platform Podcast Receiver: Not favouring the very propritory nature of Apple Quick iTunes I looked for an open-source alternative and found a superb piece of Pod-Casting software called JUICE. It has become a popular program for downloading favourite programmes and podcasts and it's not hard to see why, it's a supurb ltlle program, small and efficient, easy to download, easy to install and use. You can download JUICE for free from http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/ |
WEB PAGE CREATION SOFTWARE |
N-VU : N-View (New-View) has taken the Composer component of the Mozilla Suite to new degrees of sophistication, functionality and usefulness has been greatly developed and enhanced by the NVU project. N-VU is a more comprehensive, yet simple to use web-page creation tool that competes with expensive alternatives such as Microsoft FrontPage and Dreamweaver. http://www.nvu.com/index.php COMPOSER: I made this website using COMPOSER, which is part of the MOZILLA SUITE. As mentioned above The Mozilla Foundation ceased further development of Mozilla Suite discontinued in 2005. The Mozilla Suite included a Web Browser, E-Mail client and Composer - the web page creator. Work on this useful suite is being contined by a new organisation under the SeaMonkey name. It does not mean that the MOZILLA SUITE is not worth consideration, as it does work very well. http://www.mozilla.org/products/mozilla1.x/ SEAMONKEY: Continued development of the whole Mozilla Suite is now being undertaken by the SEAMONKEY project. See more at: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/ |
FTP CLIENTS - For Uploading Files To Your Web space (File Transfer Protocol) |
I use CORE FTP LE - It is a 'Lite Edition' version of commercial software and is free to use for private/personal (i.e. non-commercial) use. I have found it very useful and intuitive. CORE FTP LE - Lite Edition, free for personal use and available from : http://www.coreftp.com/ ALTERNATIVE FTP CLIENTS FILEZILLA - A very comprehensive Open Source FTP program, available from : http://filezilla.sourceforge.net DELUXE FTP - A straightforward FTP client available from : http://www.deluxeftp.com |
FREE FILE COMPRESSION TOOLS (Zip etc) |
Most people are familiar with ZIP files and the useful compression (space saving) that they offer. Previous versions of Windows could not handle ZIP files without the use of a third party application. Windows XP can unzip ZIP files but not create them. WIPZIP is a popular program that many have heard of and another program called WINRAR can be seen as an alternative which produces even better amounts of file compression. However neither of these programs is free - both are offered as free downloads for evaluation only. I have
looked for a
completely FREE alternative and have come across
two free programs for personal use - Quick Zip and
ALZip.
ALZip is a fantastic little program, small, easy to install and great
to use. Quick Zip may also be worth a try too. Both
applications are truly free file
compression software for personal use.
ALZip is available free for personal use from ALTOOLS here : http://www.altools.net/ Quick Zip is available free from QUICKZIP.org here : http://www.quickzip.org/ |
RADIO PIXEL PLOTTING SOFTWARE |
Radio enthusiasts may have seen the fascinating pixel plot coverage maps on this site - they were produced with an ingenious program called RadioMobile which is available from Communication Plus. RadioMobile can be downloaded from the cplus website here : http://www.cplus.org/rmw/english1.html Getting Started with RadioMobile can be found here : http://www.cplus.org/rmw/getting_started.html |
| DISCLAIMER:
The software featured on these pages has been found to be genuinely
useful (and free for personal use of course). Problems are
very
unlikely indeed, however MDS975
cannot be held responsible for any undesired effects that any of this
software may cause to a user's computer. MDS975 is not the
software
publisher and therefore can offer no warranty or support.
Help
and
support should be sought from the software publishers website via the
FAQ pages, technical support pages or user forums using the links above. |
<<<< Back To FREE SOFTWARE Part One |
Free
Software - Part One Computers Why
Windows? Penguin
saves the day Why Linux? Linux
and
You Linux In The
LimelightLinks:
OpenOffice.org - A comprehensive Office Suite for Linux and Windows
SourceForge.net - More open source software, particularly useful to GNU/Linux users searching for good applications.
Tucows.com a good source for Open Source software
Cheep Linux
 |
ADSL GUIDE - Your Guide To Broadband Internet
Mandriva
SuSE Linux
Fedora Linux
Red Hat Linux
Zero to Linux in 5 Minutes
How To Obtain Knoppix
Linux Questions.org
Linux on a Laptop
Apple MAC
Cheep Linux
Lycoris Community
Lycoris Desktop LX
| |
OpenOffice.org - A comprehensive Office Suite for Linux and Windows
SourceForge.net - More open source software, particularly useful to GNU/Linux users searching for good applications.
Tucows.com a good source for Open Source software
Cheep Linux