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BOOT CAMP 346 (05/10/04)
Shareware and Freeware part 4 -
Alternatives
Believe it or not
Microsoft does not have a monopoly, despite the fact that its operating systems
and software are used on something like ninety-five percent of the world’s
personal computers. MS dominates the market because its products are mostly easy
to use, affordable and generally do the job they are meant to do. It also helps
that over the years Microsoft made less of a hash of marketing its wares than
most of its rivals but the point is there are plenty of alternatives if you
don’t fancy contributing to Bill Gates’s pension fund. This week’s selection of
freeware and shareware programs demonstrates that you don’t have to spend
anything to get hold of software that can be every bit as good as the
Microsoft
offerings, in some cases
it is even better!
OPERATING SYSTEM
LINUX, Open Source/freeware,
www.linux.org/
After a fairly slow
start Linux has evolved into a practical, safe and stable alternative to Windows
and the Mac operating systems (OS). There are many different versions or
‘distributions’ of Linux, covering a wide range of applications, from home
desktop to high-end network server and as we showed in Boot Camps 318 to 320
(www.telegraph.co.uk/bootarc) you do not need to be
an expert, or learn any new skills in order to use it. Commercial distributions
like Red Hat and SuSe -- available for less than £20 on disc or downloadable
free from the net -- look and feel a lot like Windows, moreover they are bundled
with a suite of Office type applications, web browser and email software,
networking tools, multimedia utilities, in fact just everything you need for
home and small business use. Windows and Linux can co-exist on one PC (though it
can be tricky to setup if Windows is installed first), but don’t let that put
you off. Several mainstream manufacturers are now offering Linux as an
alternative to Windows or Mac OS’s on desktop PCs and it is starting to worry
the big boys. If you want to stay ahead of the game now would be a good time to
find out what all the fuss is about.
WORD PROCESSOR
ABIWORD, freeware, 5Mb, Windows
98/SE/ME/NT/2k/XP, Linux
www.abisource.com/
Microsoft Word is the world’s most popular word processor,
deservedly so, but if there is a criticism then it is that it bloated and too
clever by half with vastly more features than most users will ever want or need.
AbiWord is a multilingual Open Source/freeware word processor that gets back to
basics but it bears an uncanny resemblance to Word so most users will have no
problems getting to grips with it straight away. It is fully compatible with
Word and you can open, create and save documents in .doc format, and those of
most other major word processors. It has all of Word’s most useful features,
including a spellchecker (available in 30 languages), word count, mail merge,
tables and so on, plus there are similar font, formatting and graphics-handling
capabilities to Word. It also supports right-to-left, left to right and
mixed-mode text, an extremely useful facility in some languages and something
that is difficult to achieve in Word. There’s a huge range of free plug-ins to
extend AbiWord’s capabilities. These include the facility to import and export
Adobe .pdf documents, MS Write. WordPerfect and Star Office files, add a
Thesaurus, text-to-speech converter, Google search bar, grammar checker and much
more
OFFICE SUITE
OPEN OFFICE, Open Source/freeware,
65Mb Windows 98/SE/ME/NT/2k/XP, Linux, Mac OS
www.openoffice.org/
Love it or loath it MS
Office has become the standard by which other office suites are judged and in
that respect Open Office stands up well. There are five main components: Writer
is a competent word processor with many of the key features of MS Word. Calc is
a spreadsheet program, compatible with Excel with a standard range of functions,
data analysis tools and 2D and 3D chart-making functions. Impress is the Open
Office equivalent of MS PowerPoint, a presentation program with drawing tools,
animation and special effects facilities. Draw is a graphics program with the
capability to create eye-catching diagrams and illustrations and manipulate and
edit images and photographs. Finally Database Tools, this is a simple
spreadsheet-like database program with built in support for dBase, ODBC and
JDBC. Like MS Office all Open Office applications are fully integrated, making
it easy to switch between them and move data around, they are compatible and can
share files with their Microsoft equivalents (and some other Office suites) and
it is supported by a large and friendly community of users assisting in its
development and who are only too happy to help newcomers though lively forums
and newsgroups.
WEB BROWSER AND EMAIL SOFTWARE
MOZILLA, FIREFOX & THUNDERBIRD, Open Source/freeware,
Windows 95/98/SE/ME/NT/2k/XP, Linux, Mac, www.mozilla.org
Internet Explorer and
Outlook Express are on almost every Windows PC and they do a fine job of web
browsing and emailing. Unfortunately because of their popularity they have
become targets for virus writers and therefore a serious liability to your PC’s
security. However, changing your browser and email client is easy and it won’t
cost you a penny (see also Tip of the Week). For a simple guide to changing your
Internet and email software and protecting your PC against 99.9% or viruses and
worms see Boot Camps 341 and 342 in the Archive.
Please note that you install these programs entirely at
your own risk; we are unable to provide any help or support and before
installing new software make sure that your backups are up to date.
Next week, freeware and shareware part 5 -- utilities
JARGON FILTER
ADOBE .pdf
Portable Document Format -- cross-platform file format used
to represent documents that can be created and read on almost any PC,
irrespective of operating system or hardware configuration
ODBC/JDBC
Open DataBase Connectivity/Java DataBase Connectivity --
standards for accessing, exchanging and managing database information
OPEN SOURCE
Software that users are encouraged to help develop with
minimal licensing and broad, often free distribution,
TIP OF THE WEEK
DEEPNET EXPLORER, freeware, 2.4Mb, Windows
98/SE/ME/NT/2k/XP
www.deepnetexplorer.com/
Here’s another freeware browser for you to try, and this one
has some interesting extras in the shape of an integrated Peer-2-Peer (P2P) file
sharing and built-in RSS Newsreader. The browser has all of the features we’ve
come to expect including tabbed pages, a pop-up stopper, IE compatibility
(without the vulnerabilities), though sadly no Google window or toolbar. The P2P
facility is a bit of a grey area as it lets you find and download countless
thousands (if not millions) of pirated music, video and software files from the
Gnutella network though there’s plenty of perfectly legitimate material out
there too, so use your discretion. The Newsreader is much less controversial and
is a fast and easy to use alternative to Outlook Express and other newsreader
software.
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