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Cooking With Grumpy
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Freeware & Open
Source Applications |
| So you have a nice PC or laptop and
it was a bargain price. But then you find that it's not got many
applications on it. It may come with Microsoft Works, but then you find
the kids need Word and the Works word processor is not compatible. They'll
probably need Powerpoint too. You can spend a lot of money, or find a
friend with a dodgy MS Office disk. The other possibility is to use
one of the free alternatives below. |
| MS Compatible Office Suites |
Open
Office. Has word processor, spreadsheet,
presentation, drawing and database. Get it here.
Lotus Symphony. Freeware from IBM - word processor, presentation &
spreadsheet. Get it here. |
| Desk Top
Publishing |
Scribus. An excellent open
source DTP. Get it here.
PagePlus. A cut-down freeware offering
from Serif. Not as comprehensive as Scribus, but easy to use and very good
for straightforward design tasks. Get it here. |
| WYSIWYG Web
Editor |
WebPage. A freeware wysiwyg
web page editor from Trellian. Get it here. |
| Image/Photo
Editors |
Photobie DS. A good
little freeware graphics & photograph editor with several
advanced features. Get it here.
Photo! Formerly Vicman, a handy
photo editor with several photo manipulation abilities. Get it here.
IrfanView. A
free image viewer, but it does more than that. Very good for converting
image formats, resizing and much more. Get it here.
There is a very
comprehensive open source image editor available called Gimp. As it is somewhat
complex and installing is not trivial, I have omitted it
here. |
| CD/DVD
Writers |
InfraRecorder. A great little
open source cd/dvd burner. Nothing fancy, just does what it should. I use
it all the time. Get it here.
CDBurnerXP. A
freeware burner for CD, DVD, Blu-ray & HD. Get it here. |
| Genealogy |
Family Tree Legends. Now
freeware, this is an excellent family tree database application
with good charting and layout facilities. Get it here. |
| Backup |
Cobian Backup. A superb
freeware backup program. You can set it to run on a schedule, do full,
incremental and differential backups, and backup to almost anywhere. It
will run as either a service or an application. I provide essential data
backups to one of my customers using this, backing up their data over the
internet to a secure copy away from their premises. Get it here |
| Media
Centre |
MediaPortal. An impressive
open source replacement for MS's Media Centre. Now at the RC3 stage, I've
found it works well with my oldish AverMedia card and handles all my
stored audio and video very well. I actually have MC on my PC,
but prefer to use this most of the time. Get it here. |
| CAD |
PowerShape-e. Freeware 3D
modelling software from Delcam. Get it here.
Google SketchUp. Create, model &
share 3D designs with this freeware from Google. Get it here.
Envisioneer
Express. Cadsoft's freeware 2D & 3D Architectural design
software. Get it here. |
| Personal & Business Accounting |
GFP. An open source personal
finances manager. Get it here.
Volutive. A freeware invoicing/billing
system from Binarema. Incudes invoices, delivery notes, quotations,
emailing. Get it here.
Nevitium. DataVirtue's simple freeware
invoicing application. Get it here.
xTuple
Postbooks. A full open source ERP, handling accounting, sales,
inventory, work orders, invoicing etc. Get it here.
There are several web
based open source solutions if you have access to a web server. For
example I do all my invoicing with SimpleInvoices which is just superb. |
| eBay
Sniping |
JBidWatcher. Open source Java
sniping and monitoring. Nice and simple and works well. I use this for all
my auction bidding. Still under active development. I have my snipe set at
4 secs and have never missed getting the bid in. Get it here. |
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Free Software 
