Open Source Software
OK, get this...professionally developed software made by people who need a tool or program OR who are dissatisfied with the big commercial products...that you can have for FREE! Where is the downside?
I have some faves that I will list below, but let me tell you how I got here. RealAudio or RealOne, whatever...they actually track what you watch and listen to. Yup. Think about it, they give away their end user product (although the encoder ain't free), so how do they make money? By tracking user behavior and selling it to advertisers.
I have known this for a long time, but one day I was having a lot of trouble with a real stream from an NPR show This American Life (which has since switched to mp3 streams! Woohoo!) and I went to google and entered "real alternative." Well, those brilliant opensourcers had name their product "RealAlternative" so I found the solution pretty quick! I did my quick search for "realalternative XP problem" and found nothing to worry me, so I loaded it up, blew away RealOne and have been a happy camper ever since.
Real Alternative aka Media Player
Plays real streams, avi videos, mpeg and more.
To get RealAlternative, I like Free-Codecs download site because it is fast and you get the codecs you need to play most things. After getting and intalling RealAlternative, be sure to totally uninstall RealOne, RealAudio or whatever it is these days.
Open Office Suite
This is completely viable, and probably even better alternative for Microsoft Office or Corel. You can do spreadsheets in Calc, word documents in Writer and even slideshow presentations in Impress. There is also Base, Draw and Math. Base makes databases, and was easy since I have used Access for many years. I haven't tried the other two yet. In Writer and Impress, at least, maybe in the others too, you can save the file to Micorsoft format so your less enlightened (or richer) friends can read them. I didn't find much of a learning curve was needed. I just started using Open Office and haven't looked back.
As a note: I started using Open Office because I couldn't afford Microsoft Office. However, I was so impressed, that starting to use Open Office cemented my committment to using as much Open Source software as possible and adding my financial support in the form of donations when possible.
Get Open Office Suite here!
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