Tired of paying for antivirus software? This is a free alternative. I use it at home and really like it. Takes a little bit more work. You have to manually update the definitions, but it's protection is just as good as Norton.
Tuesday, December 28
AntiVir Personal Edition
Don't take no genius...
If business school has taught me one thing it's to not spend money on things when you don't need to. I know, that sounds like an incredible waste of money right there. Did I really need business school to teach me that?
In looking at the software that I use, there are a lot of open source software packages that can do a lot if not all the functions I need to get done and they don't cost a thing. And it's not just crap software. OpenOffice.org, the Gimp and Inkscape all offer comparable replacements to Microsoft Office, Photoshop and Illustrator, respectively. Those three software packages alone would cost me at least $1000. Now, granted, I don't really do any print design anymore and if I did, Gimp and Inkscape don't offer CMYK support, but the fact is I don't need that.
So, were I to be opening a business right now and was employing, say, three people, would I want to pay $3000 for the licensing on those packages or would I want to use open source?
Additionally, open source offers a non-Microsoft platform. Given the slew of recent bugs, vulnerabitlies and holes in Microsoft software including Internet Explorer, Office, and Windows, this is a good thing. Personally, I use Mozilla Firefox for web browsing, replacing Internet Explorer, Mozilla Thunderbird and Sunbird to replace Outlook, and OpenOffice to replace Microsoft Office. They all work great and are not only decent substitutions but are superior replacements.
So, that's my geek thought of the day. I have provided links below to the software that I recommended.
In looking at the software that I use, there are a lot of open source software packages that can do a lot if not all the functions I need to get done and they don't cost a thing. And it's not just crap software. OpenOffice.org, the Gimp and Inkscape all offer comparable replacements to Microsoft Office, Photoshop and Illustrator, respectively. Those three software packages alone would cost me at least $1000. Now, granted, I don't really do any print design anymore and if I did, Gimp and Inkscape don't offer CMYK support, but the fact is I don't need that.
So, were I to be opening a business right now and was employing, say, three people, would I want to pay $3000 for the licensing on those packages or would I want to use open source?
Additionally, open source offers a non-Microsoft platform. Given the slew of recent bugs, vulnerabitlies and holes in Microsoft software including Internet Explorer, Office, and Windows, this is a good thing. Personally, I use Mozilla Firefox for web browsing, replacing Internet Explorer, Mozilla Thunderbird and Sunbird to replace Outlook, and OpenOffice to replace Microsoft Office. They all work great and are not only decent substitutions but are superior replacements.
So, that's my geek thought of the day. I have provided links below to the software that I recommended.
- Firefox
(web browsing) - Thunderbird (email)
- Sunbird (calendar)
- Gimp (photoshop)
- OpenOffice (office suite)
- Inkscape (illustrator)
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