First came the installation of Mozilla Firefox 2. Quite frankly, I don't know why anyone would use any other browser. If you are familiar with IE, Mozilla has almost identical functionality, but with the additional phishing protection and protection from spyware, it's the common sense approach to choosing a browser. It also has a wonderful spell check feature that works without prompting and even works in all blog comment forms!
For those of you who have downloaded the trial version of Adobe PhotoShop but just can't bring yourself to pay for the full version, GimpShop is a great open-source alternative. One warning on this one - if you are not familiar with the functionality of Adobe PhotoShop, GimpShop is a bit of a challenge to use for anything more than basics. If you want more intuitive photo
manipulation shoftware, you might try Paint.net. It's not Adobe PhotoShop, but it is much easier to use without having mastered the concepts of Adobe PhotoShop and the results are quite impressive.
Then we come to the challenge of Microsoft Office. What's a girl to do? There really aren't any alternatives, are there? Well yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus and his name is OpenOffice. OpenOffice offers an open-source productivity suite that includes programs that not only function almost identically to Word, Excel and PowerPoint, but it also allows you to read and write files from other common office software packages.
Rhonda is now upgraded and functioning as the special beauty she is. Best of all, she continues to provide hours of entertainment while keeping my lap warm. What more could I want??
Anyone want to share their open-source "must haves"??
20 comments:
Just so you and Rhonda get some practice at using the new photo shop program, I'll send some naked pictures of me to you. Cheers to you and Rhonda!!
Matt-Man, promises, promises ... you're just a tease!
Stopping by to say Hi Dana !!!
Unfortuantely I know nothing of Mozillas and firefoxes :-(
open office" is an excellent replacement for microsoft office. I don't see any reason to purchase MSoffice with "openoffice" available.But microsoft has people trained to reject other software.
I think you've pretty much listed the open source software I use. But, if I can think of anything else I'll let you know. ;)
Just be sure you don't burn anything delicate by keeping it in your lap. I KNOW OF WHAT I SPEAK!
There is another free photoshopt type software out there called photo plus. It's not as good as Gimp, but it is free and fairly useful.
Gimp rocks though.
Open office rocks.
Paint.net rocks.
Mozilla totally freaking rocks. My favorite add-on is Ad Block Plus. It works beautifully. You can block all those annoying video ads that slow websites down so much. I don't know why anyone would use IE either. Other than to watch stuff online on NetFlix which still doesn't support Mozilla.
Oh and Dana rocks too! I just thought I'd throw that out there. ;-)
I love Gimp. Haven't heard of the rest though. Good idea for a post.
I got what the computer gave me and just follow along with my blinders firmly in place!
Wow! Thanks for the GimpShop tip - far nicer than having to {ahem} use an illegal-ish sort of copy of PhotoShop :)
OpenOffice came with my Linux installation but I've subsequently downloaded it and installed it on my Windows machine too. It does everything I usually want to do and has far less of an impact on the PC's performance.
Doc, we need to get you geek-ified!
Richard, my understanding is that OpenOffice first made the rounds as a competitive product for MS Office, but after failing miserably, went to an open-source project. I've been quite impressed with what I've seen so far.
Tali, you are a geek-master!
Os, that you do, don't you?!
Jay, I haven't tried any of the Mozilla add-ons, but I think I'll give Ad Block Plus a whirl!
Karen, I like Gimp, but don't know enough about PhotoShop commands to do it justice!
Micky, shame ... shame ... we've got to work on getting you out of lemming mode *wink*
Ro, I'm glad to have helped you find Gimp!
I use what came with my laptop. I am computer duh and just plodd along.
Hey Lu what color are your blinders? I like green! LOL
What's a lemming?
Me turn computer on. It work. Ogg happy!!!
I use Firefox but sometimes I use IE b/c certain pages I go to won't load right in Firefox. No idea why.
I didn't know about Open Office but will definitely be looking that up! I need some Office software for the biz and have been suffering w/ just MS Works b/c I'm too cheap to buy Word.
And, random, I really like your blog. :) It's a good read!
Wow! Thanks for these, especially for OpenOffice.org. "something" happened to all my office products on my main computer, and gee, no one nows how it happened!!
But I'm definitely going to look at that.
LMAO @ Buffalodicky!!
I'm sad to say I fit into the lemming category also. However, we DESPERATELY need to upgrade our home PC so I will check out this Open Office. How do you go about getting all of this stuff?
I am sort of contrary. I am fairly computer literate but know next to nothing about what programs are better than others and why and where to get them.
Also, how to I upgrade from Windows ME (yes, I know, Dark Ages) to XP or whatever?
I sometimes feel like I'm kinda open source... *giggle* I'm just sayin....
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