As the regular readers of this blog might have noticed, I’m a free software type of person. On my own laptop I run Ubuntu Desktop 9.10 . I have a Server running Ubuntu Server 7.04 with a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) install and some other security software. I just love the way it works and the ease of configuration. The nice thing about Linux is, you get most applications for free and don’t need to purchase everything to try it. In most cases you just add the software, and if you like it, you use it, if you don’t, you remove it and try another.
This article is not aimed at the Linux user, but the Microsoft Windows user. The reason for this is, most Windows users get a certain basic package that will help them with lots of productivity issues they might have, but essentially Windows comes in a bare state. Most users will want to add some functionality to their Windows boxes and for this I feel there is loads of good, even great free software to use. I’ll give you some examples of web sites you can visit to help you find the software you might be looking for. I will also cover some of the software that I see my clients need from time to time to make their life just that little bit easier.
If you have a web site and have the need to upload or update your site, you’re going to need a FTP program. There are lots of good FTP programs available that’s absolutely free that has loads of functionality. My personal choice is FileZilla, because I’ve used it for about one year now and haven’t had a single problem with it. FileZilla has another added bonus, it’s small, and by small I mean you can even put it on your flash drive and use it from any PC you want. This for me makes a lot of sense, because I’m forever downloading drivers and all sorts of stuff with FTP. FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol and the nice thing about using FTP instead of other protocols is, when your download gets interrupted during the download process or your connection dropped for whatever reason, you can continue from wherever you were when the connection was lost, instead of starting from the beginning again. FTP is especially nice for people still using dial up connections.
Next I want to mention Open Office.org. I posted some info on this office suit previously, I just want to remind you that it’s free and has everything you might need for your day to day office productivity. OpenOffice is also compatible with most commercial office suits. You just need to change the format in which you save your documents to whatever extension is used by the people you send your documents to the most. Have a look at their web site, I feel you get a whole lot with this software and best of all, IT’S FREE.
Next is also a must for any business. Accounting software can be an expensive purchase, but as you might have guessed I have a good alternative to consider. It’s called TurboCASH and is also open source. I’m no accountant and probably the last person on earth to tell you about this software, but I can tell you that people are very happy with it and prefer using it to some of the other packages on the market which cost a lot of money.
The next and I think the last one I’m going to give you for now is Comodo Internet Security. This is one very useful program which I honestly feel no Windows user can go without. It’s like the name suggests a firewall with anti virus and a whole host of other security features. I’ve used Comodo for more than a year and have to say it’s an amazing program. All I can say is, if you have a Windows PC and you use the internet then this is something you have to have.
This is it for me for today, I’ll probably get nailed for only including these programs now.
Keep computing for free and have a good time doing so………………
