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Freeware & Open Source Applications |
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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. |
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| MS Compatible Office Suites | Libre
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. |
| PDF Creation | Bullzip. PDF writer which converts any document (e.g. Word) to a PDF file via a pseudo printer. Get it here. |
| WYSIWYG Web Editor | Kompozer. An Open Source wysiwyg web page editor. Get it here. |
| Graphics/Images/Photos | Paint.NET. A
well designed open source image / photo editor with it's original roots
in MS's Paint. Get it here. 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. Art of Illusion. Open source 3D modelling and rendering studio. Produce stunning 3D effects and animations. Get it here. Blender. Open source 3D content creation suite. Get it here. Siotra Watermark. Protect your pictures by watermarking them. 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 | ImgBurn.
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. |
| Media Centre | MediaPortal. An impressive open source replacement for MS's Media Centre. 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. GnuCash. Open source double-entry accounting. Suitable for personal and small business accounts. 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. |
| Audio Editing | Audacity. A full-fledged open source audio editor. Cut, copy, splice, mix, convert tape and vinyl to digital, change tempo, improve quality and lots more effects. Get it here. |
| Video Editing |
Avidemux.
Open source video editor designed for simple cutting, filtering and
encoding tasks. It supports many file types. Get it here. DVDFlick. A DVD authoring application which will convert and burn almost any video file(s) to DVD. Get it here. HandBrake. An open-source, multiplatform, multithreaded video transcoder to convert DVD to various video and audio formats. Handles editing, subtitling and various other functions. Get it here. |
| Format Conversion | Format Factory. A freeware tool which converts between many formats of video, audio and images. Get it here. |
| Diagramming | Dia. An open source answer to MS's Visio. Create diagrams for many purposes from flowcharts to electrical circuits. Get it here. |
