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If
there's one price everyone can get behind, it's free.
While you sometimes get what you pay for, that's not
always true with computer software. Some free programs
are very high quality and even superior to paid
software.
Students
on a budget or users looking to take advantage of new
operating systems by
Microsoft
and Apple can find free substitutes for pricey programs
that fit their needs:
———
—Security.
Especially if you run Windows, even on a Mac, you need
protection against threats, including viruses and
downloadable "badware."
You can
skip the
$50 to $90
a year for a security suite with free protection.
Consumer
Reports found free programs that "were on par with
the best pay suites we tested."
Most
highly recommended for anti-virus was Avira AntiVir
Antivirus Personal (free-av.com). For badware, Microsoft
Windows Defender (microsoft.com/defender), which is
built in to the Vista operating system. And for an
e-mail spam filter, try Spamfighter Standard, (spamfighter.com).
Another free anti-virus program, AVG Anti-Virus Free
Edition (free.avg.com) also gets good reviews.
—Savings.
$50
plus a year
———
—Office
suite. Review site Cnet.com calls the free suite Open
Office "a credible rival to MS Office." You
can save and read files in the common
Microsoft
formats, such as .doc. The interface is similar to older
versions of MS Office. Besides writing and spreadsheet
programs, it offers counterparts to Microsoft PowerPoint
and the Access database program. Download it at
openoffice.org.
—Savings:
$85 to $325
, depending on MS Office version.
———
Web-based:
You can also use free applications that operate inside a
Web browser and store information online. Some have
offline counterparts so you can work without an Internet
connection.
Examples
are
Google
products, which generally get positive reviews. They
include the e-mail program Gmail (gmail.com) and Google
Calendar (calendar.google.com). Also try Google Docs (docs.google.com),
which includes word processor, spreadsheet and
presentation tools. It also has photo editing with
Picassa, blogging with Blogger and RSS feeds with Google
Reader.
Savings:
$80
plus for skipping Microsoft Outlook and other programs.
———
Other
great freebies that aren't ultratechie? Try these gems:
Dropbox (getdropbox.com)
for keeping up to 2 gigabytes of files in sync among
computers.
Remember
The Milk (rememberthemilk.com) for managing tasks and
to-dos.
Skype
(skype.com) for free Internet phone calls and cheap
calls to regular phones.
Thunderbird
(mozillamessaging.com) for offline e-mail.
GIMP (gimp.org)
for photo editing.
Audacity
(audacity.sourceforge.net) for audio editing.
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