Wahms Helper

Archive for the ‘Software’ Category

I’ve written about OpenOffice.org before — a couple of times! because I really like it. I like that it is quality, powerful, open source, software with all the features of the more expensive commercial packages. I like it because it is not a Microsoft product. And I like it because it is FREE!

But, like any good product, there is probably a significant learning curve to its use. This is often the primary reason for sticking with what you have and never moving on to something that is actually better. And I do think OpenOffice.org is better!

The good news is there is a great, free, tutorial site that provides extensive training on the OpenOffice.org product and, to make things even better, it is also FREE! Check out this site:

http://www.learnopenoffice.org/index.htm

I’ve written about this before but it really is such a good solution for so many that I feel I need to revisit the topic.

For many years now Microsoft has dominated the office productivity software market with products like Work, Excel, Power Point, and Publisher, banishing the likes of WordPerfect, Lotus 1 2 3, SuperCalc, and so many others, to a distant memory. Productivity products like these are often bundled together into what is known as an office productivity suite. When Word, Excel, Outlook, Power Point, Publisher, and other software packages are bundled together like this it is known as Microsoft Office. And it is quite expensive; often several hundred dollars.

Many work-at-home entrepreneurs find they can neither afford, nor justify, the expense of such a product and, for those who are honest and don’t want to use a pirated (stolen) copy, there seemed little to do. Some made use of Microsoft Office’s poor second cousin, Microsoft Works, but they usually found that many other people couldn’t read the files it produced unless they, too, had a copy of Works. Works seems dated and doesn’t provide all the necessary functions required by today’s home-based office, either.

There is another solution, however. OpenOffice.org is not only an option, many would say it is actually a better choice. Perhaps the best thing about it is it is also completely free.

Some might think a free product like this must be a cheap imitation. Nothing could be farther form the truth. OpenOffice.org originated as StarOffice, an office suite developed by StarDivision and acquired by Sun Microsystems in August 1999. You may not know much about Sun Microsystems but I can tell you they are a major player in the corporate computer market.

StarOffice turned out not to be an avenue Sun was ultimately committed to so the source code of the suite was released to public access in July 2000 with the aim of reducing the dominant market share of Microsoft Office by providing a free and open alternative. The OpenOffice.org project was born.

The OpenOffice.org project is primarily sponsored by Oracle Corporation, another major player who is less than friendly to Microsoft. Other major corporate contributors include Novell, RedHat, RedFlag CH2000, IBM, and Google. If you know anything about the Microsoft vs. the other guys in the computer arena, you may notice a theme shaping up here. There are also many smaller corporate players and, in the tradition of open source development, many more individual contributors.

Both the project and the software suite are commonly referred to as just OpenOffice (or Open Office), but this term is actually a trademark held by a company in the Netherlands thus requiring the project to adopt OpenOffice.org as its formal name. The suite operates on Windows, Mac, LINUX, Solaris, BSD, OpenVMS, OS/2 and IRIX, ie: just about anyone with a home office.

OpenOffice.org competes directly with Microsoft Office and generally emulates its look and feel, though proponents will say it does many things better and has unique functions as well. It can read and write most of the file formats found in Microsoft Office, and many other applications – an essential feature of the suite for many users who need cross-product compatibility (ie: the ability to read virtually any file your clients, associates, or friends, might send you).

OpenOffice.org has been found to actually be able to open files of older versions of Microsoft Office and even damaged files that newer versions of Microsoft Office itself cannot open. However, it cannot open older Word for Macintosh (MCW) files. The easy solution for this issue is to open the older files on the Mac in BBEdit or TextEdit, then SAVE AS to OpenOffice format. Nice!

Oh, and did I mention this power house product is FREE?!?

We’re pretty excited about the Kindle. It’s a powerful digital book reader with a great number of features, not the least of which is you can download any of some 450,000 book and periodical titles from Amazon. The Kindle is an expensive toy for some and a wonderful learning tool for others.

Just recently Amazon announced a free software version of the Kindle reader for your PC. We’ve installed it and had a look and we’re quite impressed. It is easy to use and gets the job done without a lot of fuss. You can get your own copy HERE and start reading Kindle books today.

An extra bonus is the thousands and thousands of free books available through Amazon and other sources!

If you are interested in a real Kindle reading device, check below:

Competing head-on with Microsoft’s Office suite, OpenOffice.org offers a full, professional, suite of office productivity programs that rivals what the software giant charges $hundreds for and they offer it for free. That’s right. FREE!

How can they do this? There must be a catch, right? Nope. It’s a thing called Open Source that makes it all work. Open Source is about serious people who get together to create great stuff and make it available for others without charge. And there’s a lot of this going around lately. Chat boards, discussion forums, word processors, games, movie viewers, music players, file transfer (FTP) programs, web browsers, whole operating systems that rival Windoze, even the software that makes this website run, are all professional-grade software packages available for free. They are not sold. They have no price. They are free to the taker.

On their website, at http://OpenOffice.org they say they are “the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.”

Government offices, education systems, business professionals, non-profit organizations, information technology (IT) businesses, and free software developers all use this product. It is professional, powerful, safe, and FREE. You no longer need to pay $hundreds or risk using pirated software (you wouldn’t do that, right?) which may have viruses, trojans, or “back doors” added to it.

You can get legitimate, quality, software free of charge!

One of the most useful utilities I’ve found for my computer is AZZ Cardfile (http://www.azzcardfile.com/). It’s like a Rolodex, scratch pad, address book, birthday list, to-do list, and general database all in one.

The website says, “Azz Cardfile incorporates many useful tools in one piece of software: simple and powerful, totally customizable organizer software without predefined fields, Recipe Software, Contacts Database, Address Book, Rolodex, Contact Management Software, Simple Database, Organizer for Notes, References or any other items.”

It is easy to install, fast, and flexible. I use it for addresses, contact and client notes, code snippets that I use rarely enough to need to look up but often enough that I want available, ideas, to-do lists, etc. The free form entry means that it is suitable for almost any small data storage task that comes along, even information for transient short-lived projects. It’s just there when I need it.

If you use your computer for working from home you should have AZZ Cardfile installed. Shareware: $29.95