The word "free" always captures my attention. Sometimes there is a catch to products that have the word "free" attached to it. But, sometimes we get lucky, especially when it comes to freeware software. Here are a few products that I and others consider quite good...including a free accounting software from Microsoft and a free office suite from Sun Microsystems.
Keynote 1.6.5
This is a powerful notepad program compares favorably with commercial applications, and, in some respects, is even more flexible and convenient. A note file may contain any number of notes, which appear as separate tabs. In turn, each tab can hold a tree of subnotes. The software can handle rich formatting, images, and hyperlinks to other files and notes. It also supports templates, plug-ins, and macros.
This is a great application for high school and college students as their lecture notes can be categorized by class, then sub-categorized by date. It is also a great way for people to organize their own notes by what ever method they want. I have lots of notes from seminars, classes and by items I find on the Internet doing research that need to be categorized. I have been using the Notebook feature in Lotus Organizer to do this for a while, but of course that is not a free program. In so many ways, Keynote is better. I have found it to be easy to use and easy to organize lots of notes on different subjects. I might switch over to it for some specific tasks.
If you looking for a way to better organize your life and all your random notes, Keynote may be the one for you. It can be downloaded from Download.com.
Microsoft's Office Accounting Express 2007
Within the few days, Microsoft has turned its accounting suite for small businesses into two separate offerings, one of which users can download for free. Office Accounting Express 2007, an updated version of Office Small Business Accounting 2006, is now available as a free download at Microsoft's IdeaWins site.
Microsoft also expects to begin offering a slightly higher-end version of the software, Office Accounting Professional 2007, from retailers early in 2007. The professional edition of the software has more robust features than the free version for handling inventory management, budgeting, cash flow and other tasks mature small businesses require. Office Accounting Express 2007 is aimed more at small businesses that are just getting off the ground and need help starting up.
I haven't tried this program yet, but it might be worth a look if you are looking for a business accounting program. It is a big surprise to me that Microsoft would make such a program available for free, but sometimes surprises are nice.
OpenOffice.org 2.0.4
If you read yesterday's blog about Microsoft's new version of Office, you know that office suite programs aren't exactly cheap. But, OpenOffice blows that theory away. This office suite of programs contains a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation program, a database, and a drawing program. OpenOffice has been around for six years now and is being shepherded by Sun Microsystems. The current version was released only a few months ago.
As I mentioned recently, I put together a new home computer for myself from three older computers that I own. This replaces my powerful desktop that was moved over to my new studio. I decided to try OpenOffice and downloaded and installed it in this new/old machine. I only installed the word processor and spreadsheet because that is basically all I use at home.
My first impressions is that it is an excellent piece of software. It looks so much like Word and Excel that it was easy to learn how to use and I was immediately productive. I can save the files as Word and Excel documents so that they are usable by my Microsoft Office programs at my studio. If I have any complaints, is that sometimes it seems slow to load. Other than that, it is a terrific piece of software and I plan to keep using it at home.
You can download it from the OpenOffice web site and from the Download.com website. One of the advantages of going to Download.com website is that you can read their review and the reviews of lots of users who installed it. The OpenOffice web site does offer a good list of links to other websites and blogs where you can learn a lot of neat tricks and tips on using the programs.
The GIMP 2.2.10
I must admit that I have not used this program yet, but the reviews I have read are very favorable. The GIMP is a powerful general-purpose image editors. The application's advanced features include channels, layers and masks, filters and effects, tabbed palettes, editable text tools, and brightness/contrast adjustments. It may be the ideal tool for amateur photographers, Web designers, and anyone who wants to create and edit professional-quality digital images on a budget. It is also available on the Download.com web site.
More free software recommendations soon.
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