I know someone:
a) whose computer just crashed
b) who just switched over from Mac to Windows
c) who is short on cash and can’t purchase software
For that person, I’d recommend the following open source software:
For Sound Editing: Audacity
For Graphics Editing: GIMP
For Word Processing and Spreadsheets: Google Docs
Do you have any other recommendations for my friend?
AVG for free anti-virus. Alternative to Microsoft Office for word processing and spreadsheets is freeware Open Office.
TheOpenDisc.com – download the entire disc or individual programs.
FileHippo.com – not necesarilly open source, but many excellent free programs.
http://www.theopendisc.com/programs – list of the programs on the disc, including Audacity, Gimp, OpenOffice, FileZilla, VLC (media player including DVDs), PDF reader and creator, various games and other utilities.
And for someone switching from Mac to Windows, who still prefers the look and feel of a Mac, try FlyakiteOSX. The current version does not work on Vista, but if you are using Vista you have more problems than a crashed system.
http://osx.portraitofakite.com/boot.htm
Wasn’t Textpad on this list? Or am I just imagining things? It’s not free or Open Source so maybe it was removed. I bought TextPad but even so, use Scite mostly now for my text editing.
Paint.NET is a another good photo editor along the lines of GIMP. But it seems a little more simple to use. At least for people used to windows.
CDBurnerXP for ummmm, CD burning.
Textpad was, and I removed it for just that reason. But it is a really good text editing program. I’ll have to try Scite.
I downloaded OpenOffice onto my computer and started using it this morning, and I am extremely pleased. It’s much quicker than Microsoft Office, and it has all the features that I need. Why would anyone pay for Microsoft’s clunky, overweighted software any more?
There’s also Notepad++ (visit notepad-plus-plus.org to download), which is a really nice multi-tab simple text editor that recognizes and helps your catch errors in the syntax of html, php and other programming languages.