Posted in Computers & Tech / Software / Business & Productivity
Author: Trekkie101 Total-Replies: 10

Im actually very surprised and shocked no-one has posted about AbiWord yet, its a free cross platform word processor and quite frankly kicks hell into Microsoft word and leaves open offices word processor in tears, first of all it supports almost every word format you could think up. Saves to doc, abw, pdf, rtf and the various other formats. Very nice to use and doesnt have any extra bloat lingering in the UI.

Works on almost any platform including Mac OS X.

Dictionarys for almost any language there is and can be ported to other languages. Porting to other systems is very easy as the code base is standalone and not tied into any systems like a windows only application.

Source code as you would imagine, is freely available to do whatever you want with.

www.abiword.com

Posted in Computers & Tech / Operating Systems / Windows (All Versions)
Author: Arbitrary Total-Replies: 16

You can't just download this stuff; you have to go and actually buy the Microsoft Office Suite. Check out this link for Word: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/FX100487981033.aspx. You can download a free trial, but after that is over, you'll have to go and buy Word. You can also just get the whole suite here: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/suites/FX101674071033.aspx.

Now, on the other hand, if you do want a similar word processing system for free, you can always download OpenOffice here: http://www.openoffice.org/. Programs similar to word and powerpoint are both in there. Good luck.

Posted in Computers & Tech / What's New...?
Author: amitbhandari Total-Replies: 13

There is lot of discussion on on-demand computing and is an urgent need for business sector. However, the small business can't really expect to buy a laptop for their employees.

On-demand computing
When we would sit in front of any PC, anywhere, and with the digital equivalent of having all the applications and data at beck and call.

Many people carry their data around on a USB stick - presentations, documents, spreadsheets, you name it - why not carry the programs too! Portable applications are built for the sole purpose of being run off a USB stick - no installation, no writing settings to anything other than its own folder, and best of all, nearly all of them are free.

The Demands
Finding the best portable application for your needs is all about balancing size and features. Your first consideration is that the application should not write any settings to the host computer - you don't really want to leave your mark anywhere, do you? The next priority is size - the need is several small programs than one that hogs all the space. After all, even 512 MB USB drives can get full alarmingly quickly, and the more room is their for data, the better it is. Smaller applications have fewer features, but few of us use all the bells and whistles in most of the software.

Before proceeding, remember that all the applications need to be crammed into 200 MB of space - the remaining 300-odd should be kept free for data. Small size is a priority, but as far as possible, any compromise on features will not be there.

The office Suite
Portable OpenOffice.org is the choice right from its excellent support for all common MS Office formats to its MS Office-like interface, however, it weighs a lot (144 MB) taking up a huge chunk of the limit. If only Word processor is required, then AbiWord can be used which takes up only 15 MB of space.

The E-mail Client
On one hand, there is i.Scribe, a small seemingly simple e-mail client that fills up only 1 MB of space. It even comes with its own Bayesian spam filter, and is extremely light on system resources.

At the other end of the spectrum is Portable Thunderbird, which brings to the USB all the features of Mozilla Thunderbird - e-mail, internal support for RSS feeds, a spam filter and a spell checker. On the flip side, it occupies 9 MB.

The Anti-Virus
Now, be safe in assuming that USB drive is being connected to a clean PC with carrying an anti-virus with you. ClamWin is a free, open source, 18 MB antivirus that comes from the ClamAV team, who have been developing the Clam anti-virus engine since the days of DOS. To have ClamWin on USB, the software must be installed on a PC and follow the manual to set it up for USB drives. Remember, it isn't real-time or on-access scanner, so the program must be started manually and choose the file(s) to be scanned.

The PIM
For busy individuals who need to keep track of their tasks and schedules, EssentialPIM is very useful Personal Information Manager (PIM), which looks a little like Outlook's PIM side. You can use it to create to-do listss, schedule meeting and appointments, manage contacts, and leave little notes to yourself.

The Browser
There are only three browsers worth mentioning - Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera. Unfortunately, Opera is not portable yet.

For IE users, Crazy Browser is available, a 500 KB browser that seams to be a head mix of all three - it uses the IE engine, but also brings in some cool features from another two, like tabbed browsing, plug-ins and mouse gestures.

The same open source community that's responsible for Portable OpenOffice.org and Portable Thunderbird also gives us Portable Firefox, which is just that - a fully functional USB version of the Firefox browser, including support for installing the insanely popular Firefox extensions, but at 17 MB, you are going to be crunched for space.

The Media Player
Work or play chances are that you can't escape without encountering a sound or video clip that needs viewing. Since the presence of codecs on the host can't be guaranteed, two such players exist which bundle the codecs alongwith.

VideoLan VLC Player which can play nearly any audio and video file in existence and doesn't require any codecs to be pre-installed. It's tad costly at nearly 25 MB though.

MPlayer is lot lighter at 7 MB and ofcourse, it too doesn't any codecs to be installed on the PC.

The Image Viewer
IrfanView supports a huge number of image formats, is light on system resources, easy to use and can even convert images to different formats with some good compression ratios

The PDF Reader
While Adobe Reader is the de facto for reading PDF documents, but it is bulky and a resource hog. Overcoming both these nags is Foxit PDF Reader. It occupies only 2 MB of space.

The Start Menu
PStart is a program that sits in the system tray and gives customized menu that lets to choose which application is required to run. It even hunts down executable files on the drive, so that manual entries are not required. Once all the applications are in place, just select scan for executables function to create portable start menu.

Making drive autorun
If the host is running Windows XP and SP2, then you can even make the USB stick autorun by specifying an autorun.inf file. Just follow the listed steps (an example of PStart menu is shown):




Making Stick Bootable
If you really want the freedom from host's OS, you can keep a copy of DSL (Damn Small Linux) OS in stick which is just 50 MB. It does comes with FluxBox Window Manager. However, on the hardware front, a bootable USB stick is required and the motherboard of the host PC must support booting from a USB device.

Posted in Computers & Tech / Software / Freeware
Author: Sarah81 Total-Replies: 15



Freeware has *really* gone down the tubes in the last few years. I used to have no problem getting free programs - and I *loved* the "guiltware" concept that some programmers came up with. (They asked you to donate to a charity or foundation of their choice - and they often gave you several options - if you felt bad about getting a good program for free.)

However: now there's so much spyware and adware packaged with so many of the "free" programs that I tend to avoid them unless it's absolutely necessary.

Example: I thought it would be sweet to have a Kill Bill desktop theme, so I Googled for one. I kept running into this seemingly *great* theme (XP user here) from this one guy. It was all over the Internet ... looked really awesome from the screen shots, etc. I tried installing it and was given a message stating that an adbar would be included "to help keep it free." I canceled the installation and deleted the file, then went back to the site and gave it a bad rating. I mean ... seriously ... if someone wants to get something in return for creating desktop themes, set up a site that requires us to <- snipped -> banners before we're taken to the download screen. Or charge us a buck apiece through PayPal. Or just put ads up on the page. Or something. But dumping spy/adware into programs ... really ... really ... stinks.

And that's my tangent for today. }

Posted in Computers & Tech / Software / Business & Productivity
Author: hatim Total-Replies: 34

Since i switched to total Open Source about 6 months ago I don't have Microsoft Office on my system (even though i have got original licences to both Office2003 and WindowsXP. rare in my country where pircay reigns)

Microsoft Office is an awsome piece of Software but OpenOffice also does every thing. IMO drawing tools of MS office are suprior to OpenOffice. MS Office seems slick and is more robust (there was a story that OpenOffice is using more and more java code. And I think most of MS Office content is in C++)

The only reason some would want to switch to OO is taht its FREE (as in BEER)

Posted in Computers & Tech / Operating Systems / MacOS
Author: chiiyo Total-Replies: 25

Oooh. Thank you Brian~ *adopts as fellow Mac-enthusiast on Astahost forums*

*digs into her old blog post about all the applications she has on her mac*

I actually like Microsoft Office for Mac... at least, compared to the Windows version. I think the Mac version is more intuitive and prettier than the Windows version! *wink* Stuff like the formatting palette, which is so much more intuitive than the windows one... Yeah, this one have to buy...

I love most of the applications that come along with the OS, especially the ones that are coming with Tiger (still waiting for it!), like Finder, Mail, Safari, Stickies, iTunes.

I think ClamXav rocks, purely because it's a free (donation-ware) lightweight antivirus scanner, which is basically all you'd need on a mac anyway. I hate bloat.

Can't live without Firestarter FX for overburning my CDs and Himmelbar for the whole Start-bar functionality I'm used to in Windows.

MacJournal for archiving all my writing into different Journals, and VooDooPad Lite for notetaking is just miraculous. I wish I could pay for VooDooPad though, I think there's a lot of functionality in the paid version that would really clinch VoodooPad as my main note-taking program. Like ability to export to .txt and sketching.

MP3 Alarm Clock... *grin* because I need to wake up to some random song that I love every morning!

I use Cyberduck and Adium as well... This Imagewell, can you put up the link to it? Looks intriguing...

Posted in Computers & Tech / Operating Systems / GNU/Linux
Author: Hercco Total-Replies: 21

I gotta agree with Roberrtk on Mandrake and RedHat. They are excellent choices for anyone.

Debian is my choice for my linux machine. The installation is very customizable and liek Rob said has very up to date features.

I ahve heard lots of good about SuSe. However I've also heard that it is made rather hard for people to get it free. I guess you could say they are on the "gray area" concerning GPL.

Posted in Computers & Tech / Operating Systems / MacOS
Author: monahan Total-Replies: 23

Here are soem great Open Source alternatives you can use on the mac.

Web Browsing

Mozilla Firefox
The premier free, open-source browser. Tabs, pop-up blocking, themes, and extensions. Considered by many to be the world's best browser.


Camino
Based on the same Mozilla foundation as Firefox, Camino is a more native OS X app. Fast and simple.


Video Player / Video Podcasting

Miro
Beautiful interface. Plays any video type (much more than quicktime). Subscribe to video RSS, download, and watch all in one. Torrent support. Search and download from YouTube and others.

IM - Instant Messaging

Adium
Connect to multiple IM accounts simultaneously in a single app, including: AOL IM, MSN, and Jabber. Beautiful, themable interface.

Application Launching

Quicksilver
Quicksilver lets you start applications (and do just about everything) with a few quick taps of your fingers. Warning: start using Quicksilver and you won't be able to imagine using a Mac without it.

Software packs

MacLibre
Installs a pack of great open source apps (including many on this page) and keeps them updated for you.

Email

Mozilla Thunderbird
Powerful spam filtering, solid interface, and all the features you need.

Utilities

The Unarchiver
Uncompress RAR, 7zip, tar, and bz2 files on your Mac. Many new Mac users will be puzzled the first time they download a RAR file. Do them a favor and download UnRarX for them!

RSS

Vienna
Very nice, native RSS client.


RSSOwl
Solid cross-platform RSS client.

Peer-to-Peer Filesharing

Cabos
A simple, easy to use filesharing program. Gnutella network.

Transmission
Very nice torrent downloader.

Running Windows Software on Macs

Q Emulator
Run Windows programs on your Intel Mac at near native speed. Works on G4 / G5 Macs too, but much slower.

Podcasting

Juice
Solid podcasting client.

Video Playback

VLC
Plays more video files than most players: Quicktime, AVI, DIVX, OGG, and more. Pretty good interface.

MPlayer
The interface and buttons are not as nice or as Mac-like in feel, but it may play even more video files than VLC.

MPlayer
Perian
A plugin that allows quicktime to play additional video formats. (Included in Democracy Player.)

iPod Ripping

Senuti
Get music off of your iPod onto any computer.


iPodDisk
Copy music off your iPod in the finder, like a regular disk drive.

DVD Ripping

Handbrake
DVD ripper and MPEG-4 / H.264 encoding. Very simple to use.

CD / DVD Burning

Burn
CD and DVD Burner. Burn any video to a disc that plays in your DVD player!

Privacy

Vidalia
This TOR frontend keeps you anonymous on the web using military-grade techniques. For use with Firefox see: TorButton.

Word Processing / Office Suites

Bean
Very fast and easy to use word processor. Live word count, autosaving, more.

NeoOffice
Built on OpenOffice.org. Big, full featured suite of tools for word processing and spreadsheets. Compatible with Microsoft Word documents and OpenDocument Format.

AbiWord
A word processor. Leaner and quicker than OpenOffice. Compatible with Microsoft Word documents and OpenDocument Format.

Wifi Scanning

KisMac
The best wireless scanner for Mac. Find wireless access when you're on the go.

Sound Recording

Audacity
Simple sound recording tool.

Graphics, Photo, Publishing

Seashore
Based on Gimp, but doesn't require X11.

Xee
Fast image viewer and image browser.

gimp
Photo editing application that rivals Photoshop in features (requires X11).


Inkscape
Vector graphics application (requires X11).

Scribus
Desktop publishing. Complicated install, but a nice app.

FTP / SFTP

Cyberduck
Very good all-around ftp program.


OneButton FTP
Simple, fast FTP, with a focus on "advanced queuing".

Fugu
Not as polished as Cyberduck (and only for SFTP) but has a side by side interface showing your files and the remote files.

HTML / Text Editing

Smultron

Text / html editor. Integrates with Cyberduck for editing websites.

Nvu
Visual tool for making websites (WYSIWYG html editor), comparable to Dreamweaver.

IRC

Colloquy
Great IRC client.