Generally, when one thinks of open source (FREE) software, they think of Linux, not Windows. And at one time Linux did corner the market on open source software. However, because of Linuxs “failure to launch” on the desktop, many of the open source software packages have created windows version.

Of course open source has the obvious advantage of being “Free”.  But do they really stack up to their pricy counterparts?

Let’s take a look at some that we feel are worth considering:

Office Suite: OpenOffice.org (ooo) in place of Microsoft Office ($599.00)

OpenOffice.org is a full-featured productivity suite including a word processor, spreadsheet, web page editor and presentation program. Documents are stored in a compressed, open-standard XML format to ensure future availability of your data and to reduce file sizes. You can read and write documents in a wide range of formats including Microsoft Office.

The word processor component, Writer, is suitable for the production of professional documents, reports, newsletters, and brochures. A powerful spreadsheet module called Calc contains sophisticated tools for calculation, data analysis and visualization, its built-in charting tools are able to generate customizable 2D and 3D charts. The presentation utility, Impress, uses effects, animation and drawing tools to help you create effective multimedia slide shows to present your the way you want to. Use the Draw component to produce either simple diagrams or complex 3D illustrations and special effects for use in documents and presentations. The database tool, Base, give you all the tools you need for day to day database work in a simple spreadsheet-like form.

Due to the high cost of commercial office suites, deciding to use OpenOffice.org will typically represent the single largest source of savings on software for organizations or individuals. OpenOffice.org is increasingly becoming an office suite of choice in education, government, and business. The OpenOffice.org website contains tutorials, manuals and many other tools to help you create professional documents.

Internet Programs:

FireFox Internet Browser in place of Internet Explorer

The Firefox web browser empowers you to browse web pages faster, more safely, and more efficiently. Key features include pop-up blocking to stop those annoying ads, tabbed browsing to let you view multiple web pages in a single window, and opening links in the background so that they're ready for viewing when you're ready to read them. The toolbars are fully customizable. Don't like the default order of the buttons? Right click, select "customize” and drag that button where you want it.

You can expand Firefox's functionality using a wide variety of extensions. These offer you the ability to customize your web experience through automatic form completion, flash blocking, in-browser games, or development tools to help you study how web pages are made. There is also a range of themes available to let you alter the look of the browser. The easy transition system imports all of your settings, including favorites, passwords and other data from Internet Explorer and other browsers, so you can start surfing right away.

Possibly the best reason to start using Firefox is its enhanced security. Built with your security in mind from the start, Firefox keeps your computer safe from malicious spyware by preventing harmful ActiveX controls, and offers a comprehensive set of privacy tools keep your online activity private. In this age of rampant virus, Trojan and phishing attacks, Firefox provides a secure alternative.

Thunderbird Email Client instead of Outlook & Outlook Express:

Thunderbird is a modern email client with features such as intelligent spam filters, a built-in spell checker, a range of themes and customizable layout. Thunderbird provides IMAP/POP support, HTML e-mail composing, quick search, address book, advanced message filtering, address completion, import tools, and the ability to manage multiple e-mail and newsgroup accounts. You can add a wide variety of extensions to Thunderbird to add additional features or tweak its behavior to suit your own preferences.

As with Mozilla Firefox, security is a central theme. Thunderbird provides enterprise and government grade security features such as S/MIME, digital signing, message encryption, support for certificates and security devices. The intelligent Thunderbird spam filter analyzes your e-mails to identify those that are most likely to be junk. These can be automatically deleted or diverted to a separate folder. The spam filter is adaptive and also learns from your address book and usage to improve its accuracy.

Filezilla FTP Client:

FileZilla is a fast and reliable FTP client and server with lots of useful features and an intuitive interface. Features include upload/download resume, site manager, keep-alive system, SSL and SFTP support, and a flexible file queuing system.

Paint & Draw Tools:

Gimp instead of PhotoShop ($700.00)

The GIMP (or GNU Image Manipulation Program) is suitable for those wanting to manipulate digital photographs, design and export graphics for the web, convert images from one file format to another, or even produce complex high-resolution compositions for print. The GIMP features a number of paint tools with sub-pixel sampling for high quality anti-aliased brush strokes, a powerful gradient editor and blend tool, layers and layer masks with over 20 blending modes, support for importing and exporting in a myriad of image formats, unsharp mask, levels and curves tools for enhancement of digital photos and much more!

The GIMP is a feature-packed program which may seem overwhelming at first. We suggest referring to the manual and tutorials available from the Gimp web site.

The GIMP uses the GTK+ library which is also available on OpenDisc. It won't work without it, so ensure to install GTK+ first.

InkScape Vector Graphics instead of Coral Draw & Adobe Illustrator :

Inkscape is an easy to use vector graphics editor that uses the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format. Supported SVG features include shapes, paths, text, markers, clones, alpha blending, transforms, gradients, patterns, and grouping. Inkscape also supports Creative Commons meta-data, node editing, layers, complex path operations, bitmap tracing, text-on-path, flowed text, direct XML editing, and more. It imports formats such as JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and others and exports PNG as well as multiple vector-based formats.

You can use Inkscape to create diagrams for reports and projects. Because Inkscape uses \"vector\" rather than \"raster\" graphics editing (which is mostly used by the GIMP), you can always go back later to reposition items and change font sizes. More importantly you won't end up with blocky graphics because with vector graphics you can enlarge the images to any size without losing quality.

Dia Flexible Diagrams & Flowcharts

Dia can be used to draw a variety of diagrams to suit your needs, such as entity-relationship models, UML diagrams, flowcharts, network diagrams, and simple circuits.

It can load and save diagrams to a custom XML format, and export diagrams to a number of formats including EPS, SVG, XFIG, WMF and PNG. You can also print diagrams, including those that span multiple pages.

Graph 4.3

Graph is an open source application used to draw mathematical graphs in a coordinate system. Anyone who wants to draw graphs of functions will find this program useful. The program makes it very easy to visualize a function and paste it into another program. It is also possible to do some mathematical calculations on the functions.

Utilities:

7-Zip

7-Zip is a program for creating or unpacking archived and compressed files in an enormous variety of formats.

7-Zip can both create or unpack the following formats: 7zip, ZIP, CAB, RAR, ARJ, GZIP, BZIP2, TAR, CPIO, RPM and DEB files. For the standard ZIP and GZIP formats, 7-Zip provides a compression ratio that is 2 - 10 % better than that provided by PKZip or WinZip, and the native 7zip format can provide a 45% reduction in file size from the common zip format.

Audacity Sound Editing Program

The program is highly configurable, allowing the user to balance the level of compression and speed. The interface is designed to mimic the standard Windows shell, Explorer, and is localized to 40 languages.

Audacity is a sound editing program which can record, playback, and mix sounds or apply effects using a variety of filters.

Audacity lets you edit your sounds using Cut, Copy and Paste (with unlimited Undo) and mix multiple tracks together. Save your files in a number of formats, including WAV, Ogg Vorbis and AIFF, or use Audacity's native project format for high performance editing. It also has a built-in amplitude envelope editor, a customizable spectrogram mode and a frequency analysis window for audio analysis applications. Built-in effects include Bass Boost, Wahwah, and Noise Removal.

Use Audacity to record your own podcasts, mix music, or just be creative!

TrueCrypt Encryption Software

TrueCrypt is powerful encryption software for your personal data. It works by creating a virtual hard drive within a file and mounts it, so your computer treats it as a real hard drive. You can choose to encrypt an entire hard drive, certain folders, or removable media such as a USB flash drive.

Encryption is automatic, real-time and transparent, so all the hard work is handled for you. It also provides two levels of plausible deniability, and supports various encryption algorithms depending on your needs, including AES-256, Serpent, and Two fish.

PDF Creator

Use PDFCreator to generate PDF documents directly from any Windows program. PDF (Portable Document Format) files are the de-facto standard in electronic publishing, because the author can be sure that the document will look as intended on all platforms, regardless of local fonts or lack thereof.

Once installed, simply select 'Print' from the File menu of any program that you can print from, and select 'PDFCreator Printer' from the list of printers. Print, and enter a name for your PDF output file. That's it!

Optionally you may also enter information to identify the document, such as Title, Creation Date and Author. You can set the resolution and compression levels for the various file types, control how fonts are included, and protect your document with a password.

Abakt Backup Utility

Abakt is a flexible backup tool for Windows that protects your valuable data. Using a combination of advanced filters you can select files, directories or whole drives to compress, copy or move. You can even automate the process for future backups.

Cobian Backup Utility

Cobian Backup is a multi-threaded program that can be used to schedule and backup your files and directories from their original location to other directories/drives in the same computer or other computer in your network. FTP backup is also supported in both directions (download and upload).

Cobian Backup exists in two different versions: application and service. The program uses very few resources and can be running on the background on your system, checking your backup schedule and executing your backups when necessary.

Cobian Backup is not an usual backup application: it only copies your files and folders in original or compressed mode to other destination, creating a security copy as a result. So Cobian Backup can be better described as a "Scheduler for security copies". Cobian Backup supports several methods of compression and strong encryption.

Eraser - Department of Defense Quality Disk File Eraser

Eraser is an advanced security tool for Windows which allows you to completely remove sensitive data from your hard drive by overwriting it several times with carefully selected patterns. Works with Windows 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, Vista, Windows Server 2003 and Server 2008.