I've got one word to describe why I love free software - cheap. I'm cheap as hell and I don't plan on forking over $50 for software when I can get the same functionality for free. I can't remember the last piece of software I bought at home...
I have a bunch of free things that I use, a lot of them daily. Here are just a couple.
Google Documents - This is Google's version of Microsoft Office and it's a great tool. If you've ever used Office, you can definitely use this. The really great thing about this, besides how easy it is to use is the fact that all your documents are saved "on the cloud". That's a fancy phrase for Google holds on to them. The great thing about that is that you can get to them from any computer with internet access. Don't think that's cool? Keep coming back here... You will.
OpenOffice.org - Despite it's name being a website, it's actually not a website at all. Yes if you go to www.openoffice.org you can get the software, but it's something you need to install on your computer. Anyone think these guys and the Google Documents guys need to have a chat about trading business models? Anyways, this is pretty much a free version of Microsoft Office. It's pretty simple to use too, especially if you've used Microsoft Office before. The only major downfall to this one is that sometimes it saves files in a specific Open Office format if you're not paying attention. (You have to select a more traditional file type to save things as if you want to use it with other programs, which is advisable.)
Music Brainz Picard - This is a great little piece of software I came across recently. It lets you take your music library and adjust the tags on each song to match what the files actually are. This is pretty cool when it comes to putting music on an iPod or some other type of device. It also can help you figure out what you have if you don't know what it is. It basically takes all your music, compares it to info it has in a database and adjusts the tags on the music to match. This is especially helpful for people with huge libraries, as it can save you a ton of time.
Windows Media Player - Why is this one of my favorite pieces of software? Because it's on just about every computer you come across and it does pretty much everything you can do with music. I know there are a ton of other music players out there but are any of them as easy to use or more readily accessible than Windows Media Player. If you only want to learn how to use one media player, this is the one to choose.
Eclipse - Eclipse is a programming environment for Java. If you want to get started programming, this is a great place to start. Java isn't the easiest language in the world, but there are a ton of resources out there that can help you get started. There are all kinds of plug-ins for it too that make it do just about anything you want it to. Very cool if you ask me.
GIMP - No, I'm not making fun if anyone. This is a great image editor that doesn't cost a dime. It does just about everything Photoshop does and there are all kinds of plug-ins for it that make it do all kinds of cool stuff. There's a little bit of a learning curve when you start but that's to be expected with some software. If you're looking for an image editor, this is the one to go with.
Blender - This is 3D modeling software used for all kinds of thing including professional games and movies. The learning curve with this one is huge, but the results are stunning. Go here here to check it out.
This certainly isn't an extensive list, but these are just a few of my favorites. Got any others? Let us know!
No comments:
Post a Comment