As we bring another season of The PC Guy column to a close -- I'll be off for the summer -- let's take a quick look at 10 cool and free software programs.
Paint.net 3.08
Coming out of left field in an already crowded category of Photoshop competitors, this beauty of a program is simply amazing. Features such as a gradient tool that blends images and colors in real time to generate stunning effects, a cloning tool that makes blemishes, obstructions and other unwanted elements disappear, red-eye removal, layer manipulation and a battery of slick filters make this one of the best graphics editors you're likely to find.
EssentialPIM 2.5 Think of Outlook, now supercharge it with colorful enhancements, improved functionality and easier access to components. That's EssentialPIM, a suite of utilities (minus e-mail) to help you organize your time, contacts and chores. Its Notes program is excellent and lets you include graphics and hyperlinks, and its classy color-coded Scheduler can be printed out for daily, weekly or monthly tasks. It's a wonderful all-in-one desktop office manager. IrfanView 4.0 Considered by many to be the premiere image-viewing program on the market, IrfanView is compact, fast and powerful. It works with a ton of image formats, does basic adjustments and lets you create cool slide shows on the fly.
OpenOffice.org 2.4.1 What would you say if you were offered a full-fledged word processor, an industrial-sized spreadsheet program, a powerful presentation utility, a strong graphics program and a professional-caliber database compiler, all comparable to the best Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) has to offer and it was all free, no strings attached? If you'd call it the best software offer in computing history, you'd be right. One catch: You may need to shell out some bucks for an extra hard drive, since OpenOffice.org requires 800 megabytes.
PDFCreator 8.1 PDF files, created by Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE) in the '80s, remain the most popular, versatile text and graphics document format that can be accessed on any computer operating system. Now you can create and save your own at no cost with PDFCreator. You can merge multiple documents easily and encrypt them as well.
CDBurnerXP 4.0 Some professional CD/DVD burners offer handy extras, but if you just want the basics, to easily burn music or data to discs without the hassle, here's your utility. You can create your own audio discs with no gaps between songs, bootable discs and high-def discs in Blu-ray format.
7-Zip 4.57 Not the kind of utility you might get all excited about, but we all need compression programs to zip and unzip all sorts of files from all sorts of sources. 7-Zip handles plenty of formats, bundles files tightly and unzips them fast.
Stickies 6.5 There are programs that mimic Post-it notes everywhere, but this one is my favorite. Create your own colorful notes, align them to the side of your desktop or let them stand free-form, attach them to specific Web pages where they'll remain when you revisit a week later, or assign them to a specific file or folder. They can be timed to pop up as reminders, and each can even play its own assigned song or sound to alert you to an event.
WordWeb 5.1 Remember those big things you used to store on your desk and thumb through when you needed to spell or define a word? I think they were called "dictionaries." WordWeb is one of the best digital versions of a dictionary and thesaurus I've seen. It has a massive database, and it could not be easier to use.
Simply install, go to any printed word on your document or Web site and press control-right click, and Word Press will instantly display definitions and synonyms, and also provide immediate access to online Wikipedia and Wiktionary references to the word as well.
ooVoo 1.6.1
There are several free Internet-based telephony programs available, but ooVoo is easily the slickest-looking one, and it performs beautifully. Have your friends download a copy, and make unlimited-length calls to them for free, anywhere, anytime. Try out the free video phone call feature as well. In fact, if you're a college student going away soon, why not place a video phone call to your worried parents, assure them you're OK, and then hit them up for a few extra bucks for that hard drive you'll need for OpenOffice.org?
© 2008 The Record, Bergen County, NJ. All rights reserved.© 2008 ECT News Network. All rights reserved.
http://www.linuxinsider.com/rsstory/63527.html
Friday, 27 June 2008
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