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It has happened to most of us. We buy a new computer, set the thing up, get it running and everything seems just fine. Until, that is, we need to write a paper, or create a .pdf document to share with others or get rid of a pesky virus. At that point a sad realization sets in; the buck doesn't stop at the $1000 price tag of the computer. Well I don’t know about you, but after buying a new computer for a grand or more, I want "the basic software of life" included. Alas, this is not usually the case.
Software titans like Microsoft, Adobe, and Symantec try to bully us into believing we "need" their expensive products. Well friends, be victimized no more! I want to share with you two open source projects and one free license project that just might save you a pretty penny.
Frugal Wallet Enemy #1: Microsoft Office $150 bucks
Open Office is a free suite of products compatible with other major office suites. The most popular office program is Word, so lets first look at the open office solution called Writer. If you are familiar with Microsoft Word you will be able to use Writer no problem. Writer has the ability to save documents as a .doc and .pdf., this means easy sharing of your work with others who use the expensive programs. Additionally, Writer works well as a WYSIWYG editor for the creation of web page content. The suite also features Impress (Power Point), Draw (graphics program), Base (a database program), Calc (spreadsheets like Excel) and Math. All this for free, and unlike that Big Brother in Redmond Washington, the makers of Open Office encourage you to share the project with friends and family.
Frugal Wallet Enemy #2: Adobe Acrobat 7.0 standard $299 (Why so much? I don’t know)
PR Solution: PDFCreator Free as in beer
PDFCreator has gotten me out of many jams where I needed to share information with others and I needed to do it in a format that was going to be easily readable and transferable. This little bad boy installs itself as a print option on your computer. Essentially, as long as you open the document in a program that has a print function, you can use PDFCreator to turn the original document (doc, html, etc) into a .pdf. All you need to do is click on print, and then toggle (change) your printer name to show as PDFCreator. Click print and your golden! Oh yeah, if you nose around a little with the documentation, there are other cool security options that come with this creator.
Frugal Wallet Enemy #3: Norton AntiVirus 2007 $49
PR Solution: AVG Free Much like love--it don't cost a thing. 
Before I started using AVG Free products full time I played around with Norton, Kapersky and some other anti-virus suites. And with this said, I believe that with definitions updated, and in some cases you need to do this manually (paid version is all automatic), AVG anti virus has caught corrupted files on my computer that Norton scanned over and over again. Furthermore, the antispyware program is kickin'. You will be surprised what sort of little trojans and tracker cookies you have sitting on your computer as a result of all those free tv sites you have a certain predilection for. The AVG crew has created a third program for free use that gets into the root of your system to find and eliminate malware threats otherwise undetected by a basic virus scan. AVG provides all three programs for free and I highly recommend them. Still thirsty for more? Check out McAfee's free stinger program.
So there you have it, all the same functionality and you save yourself about $500! Now your working PR style. Got any questions? Need any tips? Contact us.
