Free Business & Office Software !
If you do not have so much money to buy professional
software, there are so many goodies that none wants money from you !. Of course the best
things in life are NOT free but these programs are a good alternative to be legal without
paying . One way is the use of Freeware. Another good alternative is to use
"abandon-ware" , software from
bankrupted companies so the copyright probably does not exists or - in most cases - none
cares about it ...
However keep in mind that NONE of the products below have yet all the
advanced features or easy of use found even in the old MS Office 97 (specially
when talking about database features) . So you have to make a real test drive
if your needs are fulfilled using these products .
Star Office
Suite 5.x: The most popular office suite in Linux for years, now is ported to Win98/NT .
It's too good to be free but it is !. I cannot even count
how many different applications does includes. The Star Division was lately
sold & merged by Sun Microsystems. Cons: Slow performance , Importing is not always 100% successful,
imported .doc must be saved as Word95 w/o "quick save" , no ODBC or
any other data link type to spreadsheets , but anyway I would be ungrateful if I was searching for minus In such
application !.
Together with the use of MySQL or MSDE (instead of Adabas since I think that
the limitation of 3 users are too critical), SO partially covers it's database weaknesses and can stand like a full GNU suite .
OpenOffice.org
1.x: This is the
evolution of Star Office , when Sun decided to distribute the sources . Despite
the later version it has less application modules, because of its GNU (free sources) nature:
does not include
Database , Schedule & Schedule Server , so many spell-check language
libraries & more . However 1) I've noticed
some more new cool features in certain points like Data Source components in
spreadsheets . 2) since it's newer
than SO 5.2 , it's more stable , bug free with better import filters .
602Pro:
This is a near-complete office suite . It's not totally free (you have to buy
some features if you want them). The application is still buggy & NOT
nag-free . Although it gain popularity, I do not like it because it's not a
really full & nag-free suite .
EasyOffice:
Another near-complete office suite (that I also don't like it but I have to
mention it!).
Plus: It's much faster than Star Office .
Minus: Reminds you the old days of Win 3.1 . The menus are a bit complicated
. It's not nag-free. It's not a full suite .
EasyOffice:
(by Marcus Schiesser) . I discovered recently another "Easy Office"
Product . It's a word processor , spreadsheet ,
database & email client . It's fast & small but it's much simpler
compared with all the above suites . I cannot imagine you can
make a lot of serious work there . No undo (just reverts the older file), no standard keyboard shortcuts ,
different & limited menu , limited features . Although it looks stable
& fast , I think the continuous right-click for everything will tire you .
Anyway it's the only nag-free & GNU (source free) alternative after OpenOffice .
Although I recommend to install StarOffice / OpenOffice for word proccessing
& spreadsheet work , there are cases you don't want to install such suite : i)
You don't want so big suite in your PC , ii) It's too slow for your old P/166 ,
iii) You want a tiny application for special purposes . So here are some nice
alternatives.
Word Processing.
1)
You already have a nice free solution: WordPad ! .
2) Also try the old Write.exe (from Win 3.1)
because it can make Justified paragraphs (WordPad cannot !) .
3) AbiWord
is a powerful cool word processor .
There are many other WP apps that claim to
be good but watch out : Don’t use programs that
cannot import / export your texts in other popular format (doc, wri, rtf) and be sure how
good it do this export .
Spreadsheet.
1) Sphygmic Software Spreadsheet
. Plus: Small & robust.
Minus: It's a 16 bit application (Win 3.1 oriented) , No long filenames , No undo,
No print preview, single sheet spreadsheets , imports Excel 4.0 .
2) Spread32 (1.14) . Not actually
free , not nag-free , but full working (no limitation) shareware . Plus: Small fast & robust , 1 file
, no install needed
, can load & save Excel 95/97/2K , Multi-platform (PDA, WinCE etc) . It's too good to be so small
. Can be further compressed with upx to be sized about 350 KB so it fits very
well on a floppy together with your big spreadsheets !. Minus: Cannot load
multiple spreadsheets (but can be loaded in multiple instances so it's about the
same) . No keyboard navigation during formula editing . No print preview . Failed
to load some advanced Excell spreadsheets .
Image Processing. A nice tip
to obtain a legal copy of image processing software is the purchase of a scanner
(that you definitely need for such work) or a camera or a quality graphics
card . Today even the cheapest scanners includes
very cool piece of software . Also don't forget that such applications are already
included by other packages: Win98 includes Imaging , MS Office 2K Pro
includes MS Photo Editor , Ulead Media Studio includes PhotoImpact etc .
Among many other alternatives here are some nice
applications :
1) GIMP:
(i.e. GNU Image Processor). Bitmap Image Editor (like PhotoShop).
Another good application ported from Linux . Haven't test it very extensively
but looks cool with many tools. Cons: Printing tools are too limited for a pro
user .
Totally different GUI from anything you
know .
2) Photostyler
2 : (Abandonware) Bitmap Image Editor (like PhotoShop). Was the sole, top-most,
pro & famous program in the
age of Win 3.1 . It still makes Fax printouts better than Photoshop. This version created by
Aldus at 1993 . Aldus was bought and forced to close down a few years later by Adobe
. It
was still the faster program until 1997 (!) when Photoshop supported MMX technology. Some
old Photoshop plugins are supported (read the text inside Pstyler dir). Cons:
Win 3.1 app, (does not handle long filenames) , does not support newer jpeg
format (progressive) , does not allow multitasking .
3) Micrografx
Draw 3.0 : (Abandonware) Vector Image Editor (like Corel). At 1998 the company retired from
all his Suite, and gave this old version to the public (via magazines) . It also makes Fax
printouts better than Corel Draw. Cons: Win 3.1 app, (does not handle long
filenames) , does not support newer jpeg format (progressive) , buggy mouse
pointer.
4) Many cool freeware programs can be found in
the links listed below . Their names & versions changes every day so it's
better to check yourself .
Shareware Links:
www.tucows.com
www.winfiles.com
www.download.com
www.zdnet.com
www.simtel.net
