austraLasia 1319

Good practice, Better economics, Best...ethics?

ROME: 6th November 2005 -- What follows is written for the simple computer user, not the technical type.  I hope it is helpful.
    Q1. Is it possible that there are word processing programs that do some things better than Word? Q2. Has your Virus program asked you lately to re-subscribe?  Q3. Are you using an earlier version of 'Office' but can't afford an update?  Q4.Would you like to actually save documents to PDF but can't afford Adobe?  Q5. Would you like to have a zip-unzip program as good as Winzip, which you don't have anyway because it now costs money?  Q6. Is your email program either costly, or not up to your hoped-for standards, especially where junk mail is concerned?  Q7. Do you occasionally have thoughts about the pirated programs you are using...that it just might be unethical or, putting things rather more positively, are you beginning to ask yourself about your dependence on proprietary programs?  Then there is the matter of the OS or operating system, but we will leave that aside for now.
    I have asked myself all these questions, have come up with some answers, and have employed my conclusions now over a period of nearly a year.  I offer them for what they are worth.
A 1. 'Writer', which belongs to OpenOffice 2.0 does most things better than Word, and it is free.  I cannot use it, however, for high-end technical programs which need to combine with word-processing - but the normal user would not be bothered by that one.  In other words, I am forced to keep a version (any version) of Word but am not required to update it, in order to use those programs.  I'll say more about 'Writer in the answer to Q3.
A2.  Yes, it has!  Where I am at present there is a good firewall on the community 'net', and all I need to do is to ensure that emails don't play havoc with my hard disk.  I have discovered ClamWin free antivrus.  It does what you need it to do - you can set it to scan each day at a time of your choosing.  It won't scan 'on the spot' like Nortons and similar, which scan every document you ever open.  But it will do individual ones if you tell it to (you rarely need to).  It updates often, even daily - and costs nothing.
A3.  Yes.  So now I use OpenOffice 2.0.  Costs nothing, 'Writer' is as good as you'd want even if it does one or two things a bit more awkwardly than Word, but the great benefit of OOo, as people tend to shorthand it,  is that you have all the other programs as well in a single program (whichever you open first) - presentations, spreadsheets, databases, drawing.  They don't even call them by 'proprietary' names, even though they have them: 'Writer' is called 'text document', which is what it is, and so on and so forth.  I can open any document from any other word processing program, I can save as .doc if I want to, or to any other wp extension, and OpenOffice is usable on any operating system that people are likely to have.
A4.  I certainly do, and I find this most useful.  OOo enables me to save my work to PDF.  Anyone can see it exactly as I have written it, drawn it or laid it out.  That has to be a bonus.
A5. Yes - XP users know that zipping is built in, but not for all formats and every now and again I can't unzip something that is sent to me.  The solution is 7-Zip.  Costs nothing and actually zips a weeny bit tighter than Winzip.  It will never ask you for any money either!  And if you haven't got Win XP, then you'd be silly not to go looking for 7-Zip.
A6.  Look, there is simply no debating this one.  Download Mozilla's Thunderbird (for nothing) and be forever happy with your email.  I cannot fault it.  It played up once because I didn't compact a huge inbox folder, but I was able to fix the problem by reading up about how others did it.  Its junk handling is hard to believe.  It actually learns from very little teaching, and does not err.  You could throw in Firefox, also Mozilla, as your browser as well and be just as happy, I think, though at times I have to use IE because other things are dependent on it (and NEVER think of deleting it or your 'Windows' if you use it, will no longer function properly).
A7. Pagemaker for 5 shekels?  It's possible - but unethical.  There's nothing out there for free that does the job as well as Pagemaker does - if you need that sort of power.  You will have to ponder over the ethics question.  The 'dependence' issue may be just as much an ethics question though, and I think I know where my response lies ... ethically it is best to make independent choices in this scene.  If you come from parts of the world where maintaining costly proprietary software becomes a 'witness' issue, then go Open Source, which of course is what I have been talking about above.  But please, always bear in mind 'Caveat emptor' or whatever slight twist of that phrase is needed to fit things you don't actually buy, but download for nothing!

VOCABULARY
proprietary:  owned, usually by people who want you to pay but not to tinker with the program's source code.  And you pay either for updates or on an annual basis.
Open Source: usually but not always means free.  If you pay it is only once and very little.  Essentially it means the source code is free to see, change (if you know how!)
caveat emptor:  Latin - buyer beware!