Opensource & free software that’s actually good! December 2, 2006
Posted by onemouthband in Mac Switch, Net Recommendations.add a comment
Somtimes there’s some software apps out there that really are free, and really are good! Think All is putting together bundles of unbelievably useful software and “selling” it for the $2.95 UPS shipping cost to get you the discs.
I’ve been a fan of OpenOffice 2.0 Office Suite for a while, it’s a replacement for Microsoft Office that I much prefer. Of course Firefox has been my browser of choice for over a year now, and Think All’s CD of it comes with Calendar too. Audacity Music Editing Studio is about as straightforward and simply useful audio editor you will ever find. I just ordered Gimp 2 Photo & Image Studio and some other nifty computer library items: 4500 Greatest Photos and 700 Greatest Fonts.
One of the best things about almost all these FREE softwares is that they work on both Mac and PC. So even though I’m mid-switch and expect to be working with both platforms (and Ubuntu) for the forseeable future, it’s the same software on either side. It’s a good time to check out this, and Think All’s other software offerings, as they look like they are just in a promotional period and may start charging sometime.
Back to a Mac November 28, 2006
Posted by onemouthband in Mac Switch.add a comment
The first computer I ever had was an Apple IIgs. Technically, this was before there even were Macs (they were still just Apples). One day something about it broke and I ended up in PC-land, where things were cheaper. I took a class on building your own computers, and spent the next 5 years with computer parts around my room and 2-4 computers in various states of disrepair. Then I got a job at a music production company and had a chance to work with Macs again. A year or two later I found myself working at a mortgage company (where I still work now), as you can guess they don’t do Mac.
Now, for the very first time in my life, I’m buying the top of the line model of something. Seriously, I have never paid for the best of anything. I buy things used, I buy things new but 2 or 3 steps down from the best…but not this time. There’s a MacBook Pro Intel Core 2 Duo 17″ 2.33GHz 2GB 160GB coming in the mail with my name on it!
Look for plenty more postings in the near future about how this is going for me. I’ll be making plenty of well-researched and personally-tested recommendations as usual. Feel free to learn from my mistakes and benefit from my often overly-enthusiastic research.
