GO FREE! Replace Your Paid Software - Comments Page 1

Category: Software



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Comment Page: 1 |  2 

Posted by:

Clarence
22 Apr 2014

Why did you not include Windows Live Mail? Almost as good as Outlook, and better than Thunderbird. Or give me some reasons why you think Thunderbird is better!!

EDITOR'S NOTE: I'll put the ball back in your court. Tell me why you think Live Mail is better.

Posted by:

BaliRob
22 Apr 2014

I followed your suggestion to change to Ubuntu and having gone through the lengthy procedure satisfactorily found that Ubuntu would not (or couldn't) accept either one of two wireless modems I possess to gain access to the Web.

I hoped for a helpful suggestions from someone on this forum but one was not forthcoming.

EDITOR'S NOTE: In most cases, a bit of searching on Google and/or the vendor's website will turn up a compatible driver. If not, I'd presume those particular wifi modems just don't work with Ubuntu. If money was the biggest issue, faced with the choice of paying US$119 for Win8, or $20-$30 for a compatible modem, I'd buy the modem.

Posted by:

RandiO
22 Apr 2014

It has almost become a cliche to state:
"Friends Only Recommend Friends FREEware!".
Even though, I still hold the line at free Operating Systems (OS); primarily due to Linux requiring some command line knowledge and the need for some work required for legacy hardware driver issues and incompatibilities. You have already covered some of the top-level FREEware alternatives to PAYware. I find that "Gizmos Freeware Reviews" (at http://www.techsupportalert.com/) does a very credible job of providing guidance for those who are seeking FREEware alternatives for all 4 major OSs.

Posted by:

Origami1212
22 Apr 2014

Bob, your comments about free software are all well and good, but please keep in mind that not all of us have high-speed Internet with unlimited bandwidth. The best I can get is satellite Internet; it is expensive and throttled to 15 GB per month. I can't afford to use web-based software. Thanks

Posted by:

bzman24
22 Apr 2014

Hey BaliBob, have you tried to get help on http://ubuntuforums.org/ Just a thought. Good article Bob and thanks for the valuable info as usual. I too have switched over to Linux and am finding it a brand new experience. However there is a LOT of info on the Internet for assistance as needed. Good idea - save money and learn something new!

Posted by:

Quebec City
22 Apr 2014

Interesting, but a few months ago I was surprised to find Ubuntu much slower than Windows 8 on a slow 2GB memory, 1 core AMD processor. I even found some websites just saying so.

Posted by:

Unitary
22 Apr 2014

Bob,

One should be very careful with using free software and free on-line services.

“FREE” may turn to be very expensive!

While even expensive software packages are definitely not free of bugs, the vendor usually cares about the quality of its products in order to protect the vendor’s reputation. One at least has a chance of getting some support. With free software and services, the software provider is often anonymous and you get no support.

I therefore prefer to avoid using free software and services for anything of importance.

Web-based e-mail is free and nice. However, what happens if you find yourself locked-out or if you login and find that all your mail was deleted? The service provider owes you nothing and often you do not even have anyone to contact.

Example: I am locked-out of an Outlook.com account for several weeks. Microsoft requests a “security code” but the system would not let me get one. Theoretically, Microsoft does support Outlook.com but the answers I got were all useless. Fortunately, I trusted Outlook.com for nothing more than for receiving some newsletters. (Fortunately, your letters are addressed to a different account.)

Posted by:

Tony
22 Apr 2014

Agree with bzman Bob, buying or paying for software is somewhat akin or analogous to buying bottled water.

With the preponderance of code writers that exist in the world currently and I suspect growing exponentially I predict that proprietary software and their hangers on e.g.lawyers advertisers et al will be a thing of the past.

Your reply to BaliRob is well made

Posted by:

Kirill
22 Apr 2014

Pretty informative article, but as usual, I see some missed points. Sorry. ;)

Instead of Libre Office I prefer Kingsoft Office

http://www.kingsoftstore.com/

It's small, free version is 45Mg and has Linux and Android versions as well as Windows. But, Bob, you should mention that all those free Office alternatives barely can support extensive use of MS Office macros and Visual Basic procedures. Document format that MS Office uses now is open source, but not VB or MSO macroses. So nobody should be surprised to see a nasty message that your free Office doesn't support macroses or Vbs when that nobody takes some work home. Some of Offices would ask to buy a higher version of that package (Pro version of Kingsoft Office costs around $70, for example). So be prepared.

Another story is MS Outlook. The only reason to keep this program at office computers is that it is a front end of MS Exchange server as a teamwork server. So mail client is not the default use of reason to keep Outlook. But Mozilla Thunderbird is just a mail client. There is a special extension to fix that problem - Zendesk's ExQuilla Thunderbird addon, but you need to know some Voodoo to make it work. Never had this experience but have doubts that it gives you full functional Exchange client.

Also you should mention Chromebook, since you already published some articles about that gadget and operating environment. I mean another direction of migrating.

Any free online services usually offer very basic things, so one way or another, you need some local program free or paid or some pay for extended online service.

Posted by:

Ken Mitchell
22 Apr 2014

The key thing to remember about free software and services is that if you are not paying for the product, YOU ARE the product being sold. You'll pay for it one way or another, in advertising or in annoyance.

That's going to be a different tradeoff for each person. For Google products, they put advertising at the side of your GMail window, and the ads are often related to the words in your email. Microsoft doesn't connect your email to the ads, but it's still ad-driven.

Posted by:

Reg
22 Apr 2014

Bob, You didn't mention a free PDF writer. This is a program many of us use and many would like a free replacement for and Adobe's version. It's hard to pick one without a recommendation from someone (like Bob Rankin) you trust.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Try PDFCreator - http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/

Posted by:

cybercipher50
22 Apr 2014

Checkpoint (ZoneAlarm.com) has a free version of ZoneAlarm combined with Kaspersky Antivirus. Also, Bitdefender and Comodo have good firewall/antivirus suites that come in free versions.

(And, can be complemented with the free versions of either Ad-Aware or Spybot Search & Destroy.)

Posted by:

Kaarlo von Freymann
22 Apr 2014

Often freeware will not be as good as paid applications, but just imagine what the robber barons would charge us if there were no alternatives. And do we really need all features of upgrades. My 10 year old photoshop 4 on XP is all I need. And of course that is unacceptable to ADOBE, it will not work on 7. I have XP on some machines and 7 on some and an Apple notebook pro. I would be very glad if someone could tell me what REAL TANGIBLE advantages in my work I got from updating to 7. The whole PC business reminds me of Mr.Putin: rob whatever you can get away with. Kaarlo von Freymann Helsinki Finland

Posted by:

Odin
22 Apr 2014

Not so simple for me. I am already using Ubuntu, dual booting pc with WinXP and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. But there is a point where you have to now more about linux than just using the GUI, you have to use the command-line for things a little more complicated.

Then comes the other issue, Software you paid for and had to spend a lot of time learning. In my case CAD and still using some software for electronics, also paid and hard to learn. But I am not going to buy Win7 or 8.x, I will simply not go on line with winXP. Also not getting updates on my other software, just do not want to learn alternatives for all my stuff.

Posted by:

coover
23 Apr 2014

Re: "One benefit of using a web-based email solution, as opposed to a desktop client, is that you can access your email from any computer, tablet or smartphone with an Internet connection. They also tend to have excellent built-in spam filters that don't require constant updates. (See my Webmail Smackdown for a comparison of five webmail services.)"

I access all my email from 1 of 5 devices without using a web-based client. All I did was set up all my email addresses (I have several) to be sent by an IMAP server rather than the usual POP3 server. IMAP actually leaves a copy of a downloaded email on the server until it is deleted, so every machine will see the same email. Delete the email on one machine, and it will be deleted on all. IMAP synchronizes all my email on all 5 machines without any special software. It just works.

I'm not a big fan of webmail and prefer to use an email client. Most of my computers are now Win 8.1 and it does include an email client, but I still prefer Outlook. In the past, I have tried Thunderbird, but every time I tried, it stopped working properly after some unsuitable period of time and I had to switch back to Outlook. Outlook is reliable and worth every penny I paid for it.


Posted by:

Blacksmith
23 Apr 2014

Bob, reference photo editing,I have recently downloaded a free version of Adobe Photoshop CS2 from their website. I'm running it on Win 7 Ultimate with no problems.It works a treat.It may be old but it has a wealth of editing possibilities.

Posted by:

OJonny
23 Apr 2014

About 15 years ago, I replaced Microsoft Office with Open Office. OO has kept up with updates to continue compatability with Office and I still use OO.

Posted by:

Inspector4424
23 Apr 2014

Bob's correct, Have your files backed up and the FreeWare WORKS. Loved Lindows, use Ubuntu, and it loaded it's latest and can find any kind software needed to do task at hand. Y'all just seem a bit lazy and narrow minded to assume complacency is a better path to stick with "Established and Extraordinary Costly" SW. OpenOffice... good stuff. And we started the bug fixing far before virus detection was even thought of to which got so bad the OS people jumped on board too... every idea started from necessity. We will reach a point where it all has to work together.

Posted by:

crimsonsword
23 Apr 2014

Ubuntu has a high(er) learning curve. For newbies Linux Mint or Xubuntu is good. for me Xub.. is as good as WinXP although I have moved on to 8.1/Xbu.. dual boot. to burn your linux iso file you can download CDBurnerXP free, slim and burns blu ray, iso and other common formats.

Posted by:

Ma Cain
23 Apr 2014

Some free software works very well but you have to be careful where you download it from or you can end up with a bunch of unwanted programs or even malware on your pc. I have to differ with Bob on web-based apps though. While there are undeniable advantages to them, I still prefer to have my own programs on my pc. Even though these apps are supposed to be safe and secure, It's impossible to know who might be looking over your shoulder or where in the cloud your files are and who has access to them. Paranoid? Maybe, nothing to hide here, lol.

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