Tisoy Blog!

Having a background as a patents lawyer, I am pickier than most Filipinos about using pirated software, for despite increasing costs nowadays, I find it more and more difficult to justify doing so.

I always had a problem with people who, having spent P30,000.00 or more on the hardware, would suddenly turn stingy about the software. The major reason software piracy nowadays can’t be tolerated though is Freeware!

Yessirree! Free may be a word quickly vanishing on the internet, but surprisingly you can still get a lot for nothing for every need of yours, from the operating system to those little thingamajigs that let your computer stand out from everyone else’s. A few of my favorites:

OPERATING SYSTEM

UBUNTU LINUX

I had always wanted to try out Linux, but was aware of the cost of migrating all my software to a new Operating System. One day, my daughter comes home and asks me, “Dad, have you got Ubuntu?”

I laughed and thought she must have misspelled something from computer class. “What the heck is that?” And she told me I could get it on the internet.

So I surfed over to

http://www.ubuntu.com

and found a FREEWARE version of Linux! FREE!


OFFICE SUITE

So you haven’t switched to Linux because it doesn’t have an Office Suite? Check out

http://openoffice.org

and download Open Office. This is an Office Suite that has been rated by some editors as better than Microsoft Office and its word processor is compatible with Word documents.

The suite also comes with a presentation program and spreadsheet.

Making its debut as StarOffice, OpenOffice was offered as a free alternative when StarOffice went commercial. Practically twins, the major difference is that StarOffice comes with a database. At 6K only, StarOffice still offers more bang for the buck than Microsoft Office.

Both StarOffice and OpenOffice support all major operating systems, so whether you’re on Linux or Windows doesn’t really matter.


GRAPHICS MANIPULATION

GIMP

Alright, I’ll admit it, I did go through a piracy phase. The very last pirated program I used was Jasc’s PaintShop Pro. Come to think of it, you could still justify using a pirated copy of this program in the Philippines since they don’t sell it here…… but that’s another story.

Nowadays, I have a licensed copy of Microsoft PictureIt! (latest versions have been renamed to Graphics Editor or something) that I use together with a FREEWARE editor called the GIMP. You can get the GIMP at

http://www.gimp.org/downloads

Also available in both Windows and Linux versions.


DIGITAL IMAGE RECOVERY

I transferred some digital images from my Camera’s memory to an overloaded CD. Guess what? Although the file names were there, the pictures weren’t. And I had already deleted the copies from the camera. The solution? Downloading VAIOsoft Recovery Manager from

http://www.vaiosoft.com/download

The interface may not be as pretty as those of similar paid and free programs, but trust me, I recovered the most photos using RecoveryManager.

Windows only


ANTIVIRUS

Two flavors I recommend:

Grisoft antivirus at

http://free.grisoft.com

and

AntiVir Personal edition

http://www.free-av.com

Both for Windows but Grisoft seems to be working on a Linux version.


ANTI-SPYWARE

Spybot Search and Destroy. Download it at:

http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html


ARCHIVING

Tired of WinZip nagging you to get registered? The original PkZip too epensive? Get ZipGenius instead at:

http://www.zipgenius.it

It's Italian! Like Ferrari, Ducatti and Martini!



INSTANT MESSAGING

Okay, so all Instant Messengers are free. But unless you’re one of those guys who spends all his money loading up on memory so you can run all the IM’s, you’ll appreciate an IM that can handle ALL YOUR IM ACCOUNTS. ALL OF THEM, and IRC TO BOOT!

Using GAIM, from

http://gaim.sourceforge.net

I was able to reactivate an old AOL IM account and promptly chatted with my brother-in-law. As I also just got a new Gmail account, I entered my Googlechat ID into GAIM and voila! I now run these two services together with MSN, ICQ and Yahoo!

Unlike Zango, Gaim has no spyware and is available for Windows, Linux and other operating systems.


PRINTSCREEN

If you activated your cell phone voicemail just because your phone has a special button for it that would otherwise be useless, then you’re just like me and have been itching to get that System that is required to make your PrintScreen key functional! (It’s like an itch that goes SysReq! SysReq! SysReq!)

Unlike those guys who want to charge you, Gadwin offers for free its version at:

http://www.gadwin.com

Browse their website because their might be something there you can actually use.

I use Gadwin Printscreen to capture images off the internet that you otherwise couldn’t using Right click on the mouse. You can format what area of the screen to capture, and oh, did I mention it can Print the Screen? My daughter used the latter function when she needed to do homework on the visual elements of Microsoft Word.


MORAL OF THE STORY

Pirating software is completely unnecessary. And if you think you’re cheating Bill Gates, think again. If you use pirated Microsoftware, you’re only increasing the demand by making everyone else around you want to use Microsoft products and not pay attention to the options available. Demand grows, and the Microsoft Tax becomes a bigger burden.

Oh, and if any of these Software companies suddenly becomes a giant because of this article: Please remember me. I am after all a licensed broker.