Wescolite (Dillon, Mont) 1949-2009, February 16, 2005, Image 3
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The Wescolite Student Newspaper February 16, 2005 Tech Help ________ Finding the Right Software at the Right Price By Mark Rogstad Buying a computer (or getting one as a gift) is a fun experience. Finding the right notebook or desktop, then looking for bargains is like stalking that elusive 12-point elk. For some users, the hunt is as much fun as the kill. Once the computer is unwrapped and plugged in, the fun is over. Most ma chines come with very little useful soft ware. At best, gigabytes of trial versions are scattered throughout the menus. Sixty to ninety days after you unbox the com puter, it’s either pay up or dump the soft ware. The programs that the manufactur ers give away are usually ones they can’t sell, and for good reason. So what can be done? Play mine sweeper and use Wordpad? Melt down the credit card and pick up all that name brand software that has the huge market share? Not unless you have Bill Gates’ credit card. There is a free or cheap alternative for nearly every major soft ware title and category. Computer pro grammers or “coders” will do their jobs all day, then come home and code some more. These folks really love their jobs! Admittedly, there is a certain amount of anti-Microsoft rage, also. Freeware is just that, free. Shareware is software that costs money, but usually it’s a fraction of commercial software. Shareware typically has ei ther an evaluation period, or some of the features are disabled until the fee is paid (crippleware). Nagware keepp re minding the user to buy the software, yet all the features still work. Open Source software allows any program mer to download the source code and work on the software to help improve it. One of my life slogans is, “Free is good.” Read on and see how to save big money. Microsoft Office: Open Office (www.openoffice.org) has a lovely suite of software that works just fine. OO reads and writes to MS Office files, so you can work on projects at school as well as at home. Adobe Photoshop: The GIMP (Gnu Image M anipulation Program) (www.gimp.org) is a great substitute for Photoshop. The windows are a bit quirky, but for the basic tasks that most users want, it should be no problem. Microsoft Internet Explorer: Dump IE! Only use it when it’s abso lutely required. IE allows popups and spyware, it’s slow and doesn’t have tabbing capability or anything else. Download the web browser Firefox (www.getfirefox.com) It’s faster, blocks popups, and has lots of extensions and themes from which to choose. Once you’ve browsed the net with tabs, you’ll never go back to the ancient Internet Explorer. Microsoft Outlook Express: Microsoft’s built-in eMail program is also stodgy and virus prone. Go for Mozilla's e-mail program Thunderbird ( w w w . m o z i l l a . o r g / p r o d u c t s / thunderbird). Again, it’s virus free, -LADY DAWGS- Shop the Knock About for ‘ Silver Jeans *Hats, Scarves & Jewelry Pick up a Denim Card and save 20% on jeans I K n o c k ¿ A b o u t jJ-ashion Clothes &z ¿Accessories and as customizable as Firefox. Instant Messaging: You use Ya hoo!, but your friends use MSN. You use AOL IM, but everyone else is on ICQ. No problem, download Trillian. (www.trillian.ee) Trillian can handle all of them at once! So now you can have multiple personalities and still IM with everyone you know! Security: Instead of Norton Antivirus,for your PC's protection go for AVG (www.grisoft.com) For your firewall, get ZoneAlarm (www.zonelabs.com). Both are free and very good. Be sure to keep up to date with the latest definitions. Adobe Acrobat: The reader is free, of course, but what if you want to make an acrobat file? Pay $99 for the real t h i n g or download PDF Creator (sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator) instead. Quicken: Instead of paying big bucks for the name-brand, try AceMoney. (www.mechcad.net/prod- ucts/acemonev/) This package does pretty much what Quicken does with out the high price tag. Of course, all work and no play makes for a long semester. There are tons of free, open-source games available, too. The titles mentioned above only scratch the surface. There is software for every major area of study, whether it be sci ence, technology, business, education, sociology, or anything else. Go to the website for links. And if you get ahead by a buck or two, please give what you can to these folks. Even though they are developing the software on their own time, they have expenses, too. If you’ve made it this far, I would like to ask a favor of the readers. Send me questions! What do you want to know about computers, the Internet, gad gets, the future, anything in the wonder ful world of technology? I’ll include some of your eMails in future columns. . For an interactive version of this ar ticle with lots of links, go to my website sebt.umwestem.edu/techtips for links related to t h i s article, or umwtechtips@mac.com for questions. Celine Dion: ' jo s b Groban Good fo r I Green D a y : Bad | i President ' Bert’s CDs 30 E. Bannack St. 683*9202 We’ve got 4,000 CDs in stock & we’ll order any CD you want...it takes only 1*3 days, no extra charge. We also have the best <ft cheapest body jewelry , incensef burners , tapestries , posters , lava lamps , etc