I'd like to revisit a column from four years ago about free software that I find to be very useful that may not be widely known to the average user.
In that column I recommended Firefox for web browsing, OpenOffice for documents and spreadsheets, Audacity for audio editing, Skype for video conferencing, Pidgin for instant messaging, Gimp for image editing, WinAmp for playing music, Picassa for photo management, Thunderbird for email, and Linux for those interested in alternatives to Microsoft Windows or Apple's MacOS. Surprisingly, four years later I wouldn't really back too far off of those choices - all of the them are worth a look - but time has moved on and there are some new kids on the block. The last four years has seen rise to the cloud.
The cloud
What the heck is the cloud? To keep it simple — it means that you can store documents on the Internet and access them from any computer. It can also mean that the programs you use to create documents, play music, play games, etc are also on the Internet and generally run in your web browser. Some of my choices for free software alternatives are cloud based. There's more to the cloud but that explanation will suffice for the purposes of this column.
Operating Systems
There is a new operating system in town — Google's Chromium OS. When I say "operating system" or OS — it simply means the thing that makes your device work — whether that device is a traditional PC, laptop, phone, or even TV. You won't put Chromium on your PC — it generally comes on small cheap laptops called Chromebooks. I like these devices and have one myself. A Chromebook can do 90 percent of things most people do with their computers such as web browsing, email, and stream music/video. You can read more about Chromebooks in this column: http://bit.ly/PD7G9z. As things move more and more into the cloud, appliance computing devices like Chromebooks and tablets become more and more viable.
Office productivity
Microsoft Office is still the bloated, complicated, insecure, and overpriced 800-pound gorilla eating its own feces while occasionally throwing them at people on non-Windows operating systems. I don't use it because it does not run on my OS(Linux), it is expensive, and it offers me nothing that I can't get for free elsewhere. To be fair, there are some power users who would have trouble surviving without Microsoft Office. Myself and probably 99 percent of computer users would be fine with free alternatives. OpenOffice and its cousin LibreOffice are still a great choice. In the four years since I wrote my "software" column the cloud has brought another option. Google Docs is a web based office suite that allows you to create and shared documents, spreadsheets, and presentations with your web browser. I use Google Docs more and more and am currently writing this column using it .... sort of. Actually I write my columns with a super-geeky programming text editor called Emacs, then copy the text into Google Docs for final formatting. I also use LibreOffice pretty often.
Web browser
I still use Firefox as my primary web browser though sometimes I also use Google's Chrome browser. Apple's Safari browser is now available for Windows but I won't use it because it is not available for Linux. Opera is another choice.
Music
I moved my entire music collection of 500 albums and 6,000 songs into the cloud to Google Music. I can listen to them from any computer or smartphone, download local copies, create playlists, etc. I regularly use Pandora — a web based streaming music service — that is great for discovering new music. It rocks. I also use Spotify. This amazing software gives you streaming access to a catalog of 18 million songs. The free version has some ads and a lower quality than the pay version. If I had to recommend a music application for managing your library, I would recommend NOT ITUNES. Clementine, WinAmp, and Amarok are all good choices but I am mostly using cloud based services these days.
Video/Audio conferencing
I'm still partial to Skype but in recent years Google has added video conferencing to its offerings. It works well and is integrated into Gmail and Google+. We gave up our home phone years ago and use the computer almost exclusively for long distance calling — particularly to Europe.
E-book management
One piece of software I use every day is Calibre. It manages your collection of E-books and allows you to manage your Nook, Kindle, or other E-reader. One of the coolest things Calibre can do is download newspapers for free off the Internet, convert them to e-books, and put them on your device. I download several newspapers every day — it works great.
Folks, there are a ton of choices out there these days and my short list are suggestions that work for me. Twenty other geeks would give you 20 different suggestions but all would probably agree that you should always be on the lookout for ways to do things better and cheaper. With the rise of tablets and other appliance computing devices, there is real advantage to software that will run on multiple platforms.
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