The One About The Geek Toys

Cost of living is going up while wages are remaining stagnant* so I thought, let's see what FREE & LEGIT software (usually open source) we can substitute for the evil that is Microsoft. :-) Isn't it funny that I'm using MSN Space to rip on Microsoft and etc. Oh well, freedom of speech is a real bitch. HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAH

• Microsoft Office Suite for OpenOffice


• Adobe Acrobat for PDFCreator


• WinRAR or WinZip for 7Zip


• Macromedia Dreamweaver or MS Frontpage for NVu (N-View)


• IE or Opera or Netscape for Mozilla's Firefox


• Eudora or MS Outlook for Mozilla's Thunderbird


• MSN or AIM or ICQ or Yahoo! or IRC or etc.. for Gaim (compatible to most IMs in the market)


• Any audio editor/recorder that cost $$$ for Audacity


• Any paid "PC Optimization" tool for CCleaner (aka CrapCleaner)


• Any media player for VLC Media Player

I didn't find this all by myself though I am a proud user of Firefox and Thunderbird for a year now. I know, late bloomer. Anyway, I got most of the 411 from http://theopencd.org. I think all universities and colleges in AB should do the same. I think students would appreciate this service cause God knows not all of us are computer savy. :-) Other great sites for to check out are the Free Software Foundation and Sourceforge.net.

* Actually, as of September 1, the minimum wage for AB has risen from $5.90 to $7.00. It's still a dollar short of BC's standard but it's a nice improvement. :-)

Speaking of inner geekdom, here's a link Charissa sent. ;-) I'm only 18.14596% Geek. HAHAHAHAHAHA