So, for users of “absolutely free” programs (I mean most Russian-speaking users who’ve never bought a single program) it doesn’t really matter what license, how much the program costs, etc. small stuff. I myself was recently like that, so I’ll be the last to throw a stone at “pirates”. The talk, however, is about something else. Recently, getting to the States, I encountered a very unusual concept for me — using exclusively legal software. At that, such an approach is ubiquitous here, well or at least very widespread. Besides this, the number of purchased licenses corresponds to the number of computers on which this program is installed. In general, miracles and only miracles.
After spinning in such an atmosphere for half a year, I started noticing with surprise some psychological shift in myself. I started thinking that that’s how it should be, and you’ll laugh, but on my work computer 100% of the software is legal and fully paid for. And this despite the fact that I work from home and nobody controls what and from where I install. You know, there’s definitely something to this. You feel quite strange buying a program that you could easily pirate. And especially, if the program is good, the thought that the money paid goes to a good cause always warms me.
This is one side of the coin, but there’s something else too. When a program is needed for work and the company pays, then everything is fine. When it’s about something useful and inexpensive, it’s pleasant to pay for it even from your own pocket, well at least it’s not burdensome. Completely different story if you need to lay out several hundred dollars for some office or something like that. First, it’s expensive and money is a pity, and second there’s such a feeling that from the entire purchased package, I’ll use at most 5%-10% of capabilities, but paid for all 100%. Agree that what a usual, “not advanced” user like me does in Word — opens others’ documents, writes his own (with minimal formatting), well I also sometimes print envelopes. And that’s it. And with outlook — this is generally a song. I have quite a large volume of mail, up to 1000 letters a day. Of them about 100 letters remain for eternal storage. And for me outlook and its younger brother OE glitch. Can close itself at an inopportune moment, and the letter, almost finished but alas, not saved disappears, to my terrible screams and curses. This isn’t theoretical speculation, this is the sad experience of life.
This I’m leading to the fact that there is indeed an alternative and it’s called free software. This software can be with open sources, can be with closed ones, but for an ordinary user this doesn’t play a special role. And for me, as a programmer, I don’t often have to climb into the sources of a big system, with the goal of fixing something there or sharpening it for myself. Although, such things happened, but the point is that these programs are really absolutely free and many of them really work. For Linux users and other FreeBSDs there’s nothing strange in this, there’s a wagon of such software, and its use is commonplace and doesn’t cause any ohs-ahs from anyone. In the Windows environment, this is strange, unusual and even frightening. And a suspicion arises that somewhere a dog is buried. Well, a program can’t be both free and useful and at the same time work. But no, it can and how. So, let’s survey from a bird’s eye view what I have installed from free programs. First of all my exit to the outside world — firewall. Here the undisputed leader (for me) is “Kerio Personal Firewall”. I installed the 6th beta of the third version, and can authoritatively state — this is the right program. Powerful, flexible, lightweight. Works with 100m traffic on the internal network, and with 2.5m on the external, without straining and without straining the computer. This firewall is installed on all win computers of my home network.
Next, mail. I read mail with the Mozilla mailer (www.mozilla.org). A completely stunning thing! Has everything you need, everything is done clearly, strictly but elegantly. Quite a powerful filter system allowing you to configure anything you want, of practically any level of complexity. In work quite reliable, the large volume of stored letters apparently doesn’t bother it. The address book is quite and quite. A speller easily connects to the Mozilla mail program, which was fundamental for me. The speller is of course rather mediocre, but over time I’ll fill it with what it doesn’t know yet, and everything will be excellent. I’m also pleased with the concept of separating e-mail accounts. I.e., for each one creates its own basic set of everything needed — Inbox, Outbox, Sent, etc. This seemed strange to me at first, and now I’m into it. Somewhere I read complaints about Mozilla’s heaviness. Don’t know what to say. On all my computers (min. P3 500, max. P4 3.2) it works very quickly. Unlike outlook, doesn’t suffer from thoughtfulness and spontaneous eating of computer memory. For those wishing to install only the mailer, without everything else (without the web browser and html editor) you can find a pure-mailer. Don’t remember what it’s called (they recently changed the name), go to the Mozilla site, you’ll find it easily.
Next, PIM — organizer\calendar\reminder. I use a calendar that plugs into Mozilla. Can’t say anything bad — does everything needed, tasks are entered, reminder reminds. In my opinion, for use as a personal organizer, quite. Only the absence of synchronization with PocketPC disappoints, well this is a matter of time. If I have time, maybe I’ll write it myself.
Now what’s called an office package. Here I have OpenOffice in the build from ALT. Russified, Russian and American spellers included. The text editor satisfies me completely. Starts up much faster than Word, reads-writes Word files, making envelopes from it is more convenient. This text is just being written in OpenOffice.org writer. There’s also a spreadsheet, program for presentations, html editor and something for drawing. I’m not very familiar with this stuff, except occasionally I launch tables. They work, calculate, draw graphs.
Now for the small but useful programs. Spam is cleaned for me by a completely wonderful little program — SpamPal. Cuts off no less than 90% of spam. Keyboard switcher is punto. TaskBar/Toolbar — TLB (True launch bar). For file manipulation FAR.
All listed programs are free, some of them are open-source. And characteristically, they all work very decently replacing their paid analogs and often surpassing them.
If you haven’t understood yet what this was — this was an experiment under the code name “back to the past”, republication of a note from my cozy blog, almost 10-year aging.
This post was translated from the Russian original with AI assistance and reviewed by a human.