Fellow geeks, help me.
After the Great Computer Crash of ‘07 I lost all purchased programs installed on this computer — from Microsoft Office to Photoshop to Nero — and I need help replacing them for Windows XP with little to no cash. So far I’ve downloaded Open Office and have been reasonably impressed, but I especially need a photo editor (or no more web design for Lauren) and a CD-burning client that will allow me to get my mp3s from computer to CD player.
Any suggestions?
I use Open Office and love it. You will, too. Since it is an entire suite and it saves files in Word format, there’s no need for MSOffice.
For a photo editor, you can try The Gimp. I have it on my Mac and it is just like a mix between Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro, if you’re familiar with either. It’s free, so give a whirl because it has a slight learning curve.
I’m not sure what else you design with, but I stick to an image editor, TopStyle Lite (free) for CSS and then a simple text editor, such as EditPad Lite (free).
As far as CD burning, ask the Partner on IM or email, since he should know of a good (free) program or two you can try.
What else do you need?
I second Gimp for image manipulation.
For photo editing I love me some Gimp and for CD burning I have read good things about Infra Recorder.
Now for the brief evangelical moment, have you considered dropping Windows and switching to Ubuntu? All the open source goodness you could want with only a few mouse clicks in Synaptic and so easy that my 72 year old Luddite mother uses it every day! ;-)
Ubuntu is pretty sweet. But, if you stick with Windows, did you know iTunes is a free download? Um, it works just fine with MP3s and burns CDs too! Holy shit!
EditPad Lite fills me with joy. Everyone should go get it right now. What a wonderful, wonderful program.
Some of this I’m sure you know about, but it’s a good place to start. Read the comments as well….
http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2006/12/01/30-essential-pieces-of-free-and-open-software-for-windows/
I agree with foresmac… I would go with Ubuntu. Also, I use Gimp on the iMac and I love it.
Here is a site geared towards students where a number of open source programs can be downloaded at once.
http://softwarefor.org/
Lauren, The GIMP is a powerful program. It’s also got a Gtk dependency and a horrible interface. If you’re looking for a powerful general image editor for Windows, I would also recommend Paint.NET (requires the .NET runtime, however).
For general freeware and open source listings, I’m rather proud of the catalog at my site.
Whoops! The link for Paint.NET should be http://getpaint.net
http://www.download.com/DeepBurner-Free/3000-2646_4-10527371.html
The GIMP is a bit of a handful, true, and yes there’s the GTK dependency issue, but you shouldn’t notice or have to deal with that, since you’re not compiling, just downloading and installing — the installer should handle those issues for you (ideally).
There are also packages out there that take The GIMP and turn it into more of a photoshop-style interface. I haven’t tried it since my image edits are usually quite simple in nature, but you may find such tweaks make you more at home.
I love Ubuntu (it’s what I use on my desktop)… and the general rule is that if you can find free / open source software to do some task in Windows, it’s readily available on Linux, and probably really freakin’ easy to set up in Ubuntu, knowing how Ubuntu works (seriously, it’s great). So keep that in mind, I guess. Ubuntu, by default, has CD burning shizzle all ready to go, but I don’t know about a Windows alternative.