Darn good freebies

Did the “darn good” economy leave your pockets devoid of anything but lint? If so, the Christmas shopping season makes things even worse. Don’t despair, dear Commonwealth, as I promised last week here are some tech freebies; specifically, software freebies that you can give yourself like a really cheap Santa.

1.OpenOffice.org 2.0

This stuff is a big deal, a totally free productivity suite available for Windows and Linux. A Saipan Tribune reader asked me to try out its word processor, “Writer,” and so I did, at least perfunctorily.

Writer is good; it would be better if it didn’t so closely mimic Microsoft’s Word. But it does, and is therefore laden with bells and whistles and things that bite your ankles. So if you just want to sit down and dash out a simple memo, letter, or (ahem) newspaper article, you’re up against a Word-esque barrage of obnoxious formatting bombs that you have to disarm one by one.

Anyway, on the happy side of the ledger, Writer opens Word and WordPerfect files (among others), and can write to a Word format (if you want). Along these lines my tests with basic text went well, though anything more complex may produce formatting problems.

Writer also writes to a .pdf, Adobe Acrobat’s format, and the tests I ran went smoothly. Very nice.

I tested its basic ability to mix photos and text (such as you would do in a business report) and it handled the task admirably, better, in some cases, than either Word or WordPerfect.

Meanwhile, I am more of a spreadsheet guy than a word processor guy, and someone will surely ask about OpenOffice’s “Calc” spreadsheet. I have no desire to delve into this, I just can’t spare the time.

All I can say is that I hope it doesn’t mimic Microsoft Excel, though I suspect it does. Excel is the worst of the major spreadsheets. It’s not in the same league as the better offerings from Lotus and Quattro, though Quattro has gone downhill and I haven’t kept up with Lotus lately, for all I know they’re making lingerie these days. But the lesson, when it comes to spreadsheets, is that older software is often times far better, at least if you’re doing serious number crunching and analysis, not making cutesy calendars featuring pictures of your cat.

But the marketing imperative, of course, is to appeal to the lowest common denominator of user, and Microsoft has a cynical genius for doing just that. A lot of people buy cars based on the stereo systems and cup holders. Software is no different.

Anyway, OpenOffice.org is worth test-driving on Writer’s merits alone. And to the extent that ideas like OpenOffice may help counteract Microsoft’s monopolistic reign of mediocrity, I’m all for it.

Go to www.OpenOffice.org.

2. Ultra-HAL

This freeware reads aloud any computer text you care to feed it. It uses a synthesized voice that nobody will mistake for human, but it’s still pretty cool.

Go to www.Zabaware.com.

3. Windows Movie Maker

Hey, this “freebie” in embedded in Windows XP. Since Microsoft is the undisputed king of frothy frivolity, we might as well use this fact to our advantage. Movie Maker is a fun and frivolous bonanza if you want to kill some time making, say, sideshows of some digital photographs…to include, of course, cutesy pictures of your cat.

It’s doggone easy to add music and voice narration to these slideshows. Burning them to CD is easy. And if you have competent DVD burning software, you can burn your little masterpieces to DVD and, hopefully (but not always), Grandma can play it on her television’s DVD player—no computer necessary.

As the name suggests, you can also edit movies with it, a feature that I have not had occasion to invoke. I tend to run over cats so a still picture is just as good as a movie.

No download necessary, just hunt around your Windows XP programs. If you get stuck and need some pointers, the web has lots of useful Movie Maker tips and sites floating around out there.