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Beat the Credit Crunch Part 2 - Use free software

In part 1 we had a look at increasing the speed and efficiency of your computers reducing the amount of unneeded programs and data. In this article we will look at how to get new software for free.

Free Applications

You don't have to pay cash for computer programs. There are alternatives available. These alternatives are generally less advertised, but with the internet, they can be easily found.

Shareware

Shareware is software written by an individual, or small group, and they give it away with the proviso that if you like it you donate or pay a fee to the authors. Because shareware became popular, there have been several spins on the same theme. 'Cripple-ware' is software that has some features switched off until the it's paid for. Some application allow you to use the software for a time and then switched off. If you can live with these limitations, then Shareware can be very attractive.

Open Source

Open Source software is software written (usually)by a group of enthusiasts. The software is made available free of charge as long as any changes or improvements are given back to the community. Some of these groups include several thousand people, each doing a small part, and some of the larger projects are backed by large commercial companies.

Open Source software is replacing Shareware in popularity. The popularity is partly because software written and tested by many is usually better written and better tested than software written by a few. Another reason is that because the source code is available, so if the original company or group disappears, another group can take the application and improve it.

Open Source software is not only free of charge, and free of any annual license fee, but the upgrades are free too. This give peace of mind for the future.

A couple of application that are a good introduction are Open Office (http://www.openoffice.org/), a word processor, email, presentation suite, and Mozzila Thunderbird (http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/products/thunderbird/), a full email client.

Trojan Horses

The fact of life is that there are some nasty people in the world. One way for the nasty people to mess up your computer is to create a program that looks innocent and useful, and add a nasty program on the back. These are known as Trojan Horses after the Greek wooden horse.

The best defence to avoiding Trojan's is to only get software from trusted sources. This usually means buying software in shrink wrapped boxes from your local computer shop. The cheaper option is to do a little work to find safe websites for free software. The bottom line is that you will have to balance cost against risk. I recommend that you test the water with a less essential computer, or get guidance from a local techie.

Free Operating Systems

If you need to upgrade from Windows to a newer system, think about one of the free operating systems available. These are all almost Open Source or Corporate written. Writing a full operating system is too big a job for a small group of programmers.

Open Source operating systems benefit from all the same benefits of open source applications, free to get, and free and frequent upgrades. As you would expect, there are more open source applications available for open source operating systems that for any other system, tens of thousands of them.

Free and open source operating systems use different applications to Microsoft Windows. If you use Linux, BSD, Open Solaris, you will need to get programs written for that operating system. This is just the same as needing Mac programs to run on Apple Macintosh computers.