I come across friends & family who are forking out big bucks for everyday software like anti-virus, Office, spyware, photo editing, etc. They do so, not because they like to spend the money but because they have no idea that there are excellent, free, open source alternatives available. Today. Right now.

I have nothing against paying for excellent software or services that provide value. But, if there is a quality free alternative for your everyday needs why not save that money you would have spent for a better product/equipment that you wouldn’t have been able to afford before?

In fact, one of the most popular (all time number 3 .. if you looked at the footer) posts here has been about Free Software for your Computer. I should update that post soon with my new finds.

I recently wrote in a guest post at Techie-Buzz about a very cool project called WinLibre. WinLibre was a project where they put together some of the best in breed open source software available for free into one downloadable package.

A reader (thanks MechMike) quickly pointed out that WinLibre hasn’t been updated in a while and told me about the OpenDisk project. Here is an excerpt from their About page which summarizes this cool project!

OpenDisc is a high quality collection of open source software (OSS) for the Microsoft Windows operating system.

The two main goals of the project are:

• To provide a free alternative to costly software, with equal or often better quality equivalents to proprietary, shareware or freeware software for Microsoft Windows.
• To educate users of Linux as an operating system for home, business and educational use.

OpenDisc project gathers some of the best free & open source software out there into one easily downloadable CD image. They also list the programs in the cd image with description and link to the individual software home page if you’d like to get them A la carte.

Here are the list of programs that are included in the OpenDesc project categorized by its function:

Design

• Blender - a 3D graphics modeling program
• Dia - a Visio like drawing program
• The Gimp - Adobe Photoshop alternative
• InkScape - Adobe Illustrator alternative
• Nvu - WYSIWIG Web page editor
• Srcibus - A professional desktop publishing program
• Tux Paint - Free drawing program for young children

Games

• The Battle of Wesnoth - Turn-based strategy game
• Enigma - A puzzle game
• Neverball - A fun game where you tilt the floor to get the ball in a puzzle
• Sokoban YASC - Yet Another Sokoban Clone

Internet

• Azureus - A cool bit-torrent client
• Filezilla - FTP client
• Firefox - An excellent Internet Explorer alternative
• Httrack - Offline web browser utility
• Pidgin - Multi-protocol IM client
• RSSOWL - A Feed reader client
• Seamonkey - Web browser, IRC client, newsgroup client and HTML editor in one
• Thunderbird - A modern email client
• TightVNC - A remote control software
• WinSCP - Full featured SFTP client

Multimedia

• Audacity - Sound editing program
• Celestia - Simulation of entire universe
• Really Slick Screensavers - Collection of some cool screensavers
• Stellarium - Planetarium in your computer
• Sumatra PDF - Lightweight alternative for Adobe Reader
• VLC Player - Media player supporting numerous audio & video formats

Productivity

• GnuCash - QuickBooks alternative
• MoinMoin Wiki Engine - A wiki building software
• NotePad2 - Windows Notepad alternative - with syntax highlighting and other features
• OpenOffice - Full featured alternative for Microsoft Office
• PDFCreator - Generate PDF documents from any Windows program with the Print button

Utilities

• 7-zip - Packing & unpacking archives tool with support for a lot of formats
• Abakt - A backup tool
• ClamWin - Powerful anti-virus program (misses an on-access scanner - so it can’t replace a full time scanner yet)
• GTK+ - Toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces
• HealthMonitor - System monitoring tool
• TrueCrypt - Powerful encryption software to protect your private data
• WorkRave - Protect yourself from Repetitive Strain Injury

Whew.. isn’t that an excellent collection of free software? There are a few in here like InkScape & WorkRave I haven’t tried yet.

Download OpenDisc iso image | bit-torrent

OpenDisc uses a K-Meleon interface in the cd image so far and is experimenting with a Kiwix interface that’s supposed to be leaner and better for the next release.

Also, OpenDisc has a pretty active forum if you have questions about any of these or if you’d like to see something included to this list. I have downloaded OpenDisc and I am going to make copies and give it to friends who have an open mind about trying new things. I am sure some of them are going to chase me away but hey it’s worth a try, isn’t it?

If you feel like I am preaching to the choir, I would love to hear about a (more the merrier) open source software that’s not on this list but that you feel should be.

Hello newcomer, did I say welcome to ShanKri-la yet? Before you move on, just wanted to thank you for visiting and we hope you come back and see us again!

I would like to introduce my readers to a good friend of mine. I have been reading Garry Conn’s blog since day 1 of starting my blog and I still do. Every time I visit his blog I come away hevaing learnt something. He has to be one of the most helpful bloggers around.

Hello everyone! This is Garry Conn and K has offered me a wonderful opportunity to write this brief post on his blog. I am totally appreciative to have this opportunity. I want to tell you about a brand new WordPress Theme that I just unveiled called, Digs’em. Digs’em stands for Digg and SEM. We all know about Digg, but many people might not be aware of SEM. SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing and in order to be successful with marketing your blog, business, products or services in the search engine, you have to have a search engine friendly and optimized web design. Digs’em is your solution!

I have invested my skills and experience into designing my first official WordPress theme for general public use. This WordPress theme is very well coded and extremely search engine friendly… most importantly, it’s FREE!! Head on over to www.DigSEM.com and check it out LIVE and download your free copy!

Newsgator is the company behind the popular RSS feed readers FeedDemon for Windows & NetNewsWire for Mac. With freeware being so popular these days, Newsgator was successful in selling paid versions of FeedDemon and NetNewsWire so far.

Now, they have announced these 2 excellent feed readers FREE for all to download and use. In fact, these 2 programs have just gotten some major feature enhancements.

Newsgator products come with sync facility with their internet-based servers. This means that your FeedDemon in your laptop and NetNewsWire in your iMac will be in sync all the time. Plus, the free web based version Newsgator Online will be in sync as well.

FeedDemon Quick Facts

• Newspaper format in neat tabs & News bins for future reference
• Synchronization with all RSS suite products
• Find what’s popular with other Newsgator users as well as who is linking to the news items you read
• Watch embedded video in the newspaper view
• Panic button - mark everything as read when you come back after a break
• Watches - Watch for keywords as they are downloaded
• Search outside of your subscriptions and create a dynamic channel with the results
• Download podcasts automatically and copy them to your iPod or other media player.
• iPhone support at http://m.newsgator.com

I used my portable GreatNews desktop reader for the longest time before getting addicted to the online Google Reader. And my main reason was that I missed having the ability to read feeds when I didn’t have my USB drive with me in a browser.

I have decided to give FeedDemon a whirl just like I give everything else a try. Importing my Google reader XMl file was painless. I haven’t tried their online counterpart yet but I doubt if it will come close to Google Reader, my current favorite RSS reader of choice. I might eat my own words after I try it, but you will know if I do.

What is your feed reader of choice? With the ability to have your desktop and online RSS reader in sync, would you give a desktop reader a chance?

Download FeedDemon 2.6 for Windows

You just had a dose of free software in my last post. AVG Anti-virus is one of the most popular free anti-virus products out there. But, free doesn’t mean free as in beer like most open source software but comes with some limitations but usually enough for an average home user.

ComputerActive is giving away free licensed copies of AVG Anti-virus Professional Edition until January 17th 2008. It is priced at $29.95 for a yearly subscription. Here are the difference between the FREE edition and a PRO edition.

I have found Avast Home Edition & ClamWin to be very useful free alternatives to AVG. But, I am interested in looking at what a professional edition offers in addition when compared to a free alternative. Especially when I can try it for FREE!

What do you use for an anti-virus in your computer? Will you try AVG Professional Edition?

ComputerActive Link

Mirror 1 - Rapidshare link

Mirror 2 - Mega Upload link

[via Life Rocks 2.0]

The trend for a lot of software companies in this age of freeware is to release their old versions for free. This lets potential users TechSmith is doing just that with their award winning products SnagIt & Camtasia.

SnagIt

SnagIt is a Screen Capture and an Image Editing tool. It is really feature rich and you can check out all the features here.

The current version as I write this post is 8.2 and the free license being given away is for version 7.2.5. If you are a Windows Vista user, you might have issues installing this version. You have the option of upgrading to the current version of $39.95 per copy.

Download Free SnagIt version 7.2.5 here

Request a License Key here

Camtasia

Camtasia is used to create stunning screen recording and editing. You can capture video of entire screen or just portions and record sounds as well. You can also edit the captured video and burn it to disc. Current version Camtasia Studio 5 is priced at $299 but you can get Camtasia Studio 3 for free right now. For a regular user, the free version should suffice and it would be nice step into a professional software even if it is a tad old.

Download Free Camtasia Studio 3 here

Request a Licence Key here

Update: Sorry about the misspelled title! It is Camtasia without the ’s’.

I use the free version (relatively older) of FastStone Capture for my screen capture and basic image editing needs. It is portable and has awesome features. But, I am about to give SnagIt and see what kind of difference a paid software offers against a free one.

I almost forgot to mention the awesome Screengrab! Firefox extension that makes taking whole screenshots or selection of webpages such a breeze.

What do you use for your screenshot needs?

[via CyberNet News]

Montastic is a very cool website monitoring service. It is free to register and use. If you have a blog or website and you want to get notified anytime it goes down, keep reading.

Quick facts about Montastic

• Free to register and use
• Register as many as 100 sites to monitor
• Get an email when your site goes down
• Get an email when it comes back up
• You can get status updates via RSS or a Yahoo Widget
• Montastic checks from 2 different locations
• Get a cool logo to display that you use Montastic if you want to spread the love for this awesome site!

What are you waiting for? Just sign up and register your blog or website.

If you don’t have a blog/website, how about finding out when your favorite website goes down? Maybe your bank’s website or your not so friendly colleague’s website so you can poke fun at him/her at the worst moment?

I know there is a lot of online file storage options. But, few have this kind of high numbers while keeping the service free. BOXSTr offers 5GB of free storage plus some significant bandwidth to share files.

Quick facts

• 5GB of free online storage space
• 1/2GB of daily bandwidth with rollover bandwidth (reset daily)
• Upload files upto 250MB
• Supports numerous file types (they say 99.9% of file types)
• Create folders with no limits and make them private or public
• Password protected folders & file tagging are coming soon

I like how they handle batch uploads. You can zip all the files you want into a single zip file and on uploading the zip file, they uncompress and store it in the folder of your choice. I think this helps greatly with the upload time as well and better than manually selecting files. You could choose to store the zip file as is too.

BOXSTr seems to have hit a snag with their old system and completely revamped their site. Their old users don’t get an automatic upgrade instead they can download their files as a zip file and re-upload them into their accounts in the new system. But, this shouldn’t affect you if you are thinking of signing up for an account.

I am going to give this a shot as I would like to keep desensitized stuff online for backup. Looks like a pretty good service overall.

Online storage is a space competed by several players and I would like to find out a few good ones to recommend to my friends as well as use it myself.

Do you use an online solution for storing and sharing files? What do you use and why do you it’s better?