Making the Most of your Computer with Free Programs

This month I am going to begin to talk about open source or free software and how using free community based  alternatives to expensive computer programs can save even the basic computer user a few hundred dollars, and some even more! Open source software is computer software that the creator or copyright holder has licensed it so that anyone can study, change or distribute it free of charge. Open source software is often developed in a collaborative manner. There are also many programs that are not open source but can be used and shared for free with no ad’s or sales involved, just great software from free. 

Some common open source software you might of heard of or used are Mozilla FireFox, Thunderbird or the popular Open Office set of programs. So, what are the best free programs and how can they save you money? Read on to learn more about software that does what you need and more all for free. One of my favorites programs is Something called Libre office, it is an advanced (but easy to use) office suite comparable to the popular Microsoft office. It has an easy to use and powerful word processing program as well as a strong spread sheet program very similar to Microsoft Excel called Calc. It also has great programs for creating slideshows and presentations, diagrams, maintaining databases and compose math formulas. Libre office is completely free and runs on both windows PC’s and Macs. Compared to its paid equivalent’s you can save between 100-250$ by using free office software. It can open documents sent to you by other people and save them as Microsoft word, the world standard so anyone you send files to can access them easily. I recommend everyone download it and give it a try because it is completely free and easy to install just go to www.Libreoffice.org you can give it a try before purchasing something else. (they do ask for donations if you enjoy the product and feel you can)

The second common piece of software that can be expensive is photo editing tools. They can historically be hundreds of dollars. If you interesting in medium to advanced photo editing or graphic design then there is a great program you should know about called Gimp. It is another open source project but this time in the world of graphics. Gimp is a powerful photo editing or graphics tool that has tools used for image retouching and editing, free-form drawing, resizing, cropping, photomontages, converting between different image formats, and more. It might not be enough for some businesses but Gimp has far more tools than most of us know what to do with. It is VERY similar to Adobe’s Photoshop but at a much more reasonable price for the causal user. Free or donation, www.gimp.org Similar programs sell for between 90-600$ so gimp can be a great find. It also runs on both Mac and PC and can open and save to almost any file format.

I hope that these two tips can help you get more out of your computer! Read next month to hear about the best free or lo-cost tool for everyday computer use like email and web surfing. As always if you have any question large or small about free tools, getting your computer set up to use them or have a question in general about technology please email me! [email protected]