Seven Sons

That’s free as in beer.

Here’s a list of the open source and otherwise free software that I download immediately whenever I set up a new computer. It is a Windows-centric list, though most of these packages will work on Linux and probably some on Mac OS as well.

For everyone

• CutePDF: Install this and you can “print” to create a PDF file just like you print to a printer.
• Fastone Image Viewer: This is by far my favorite photo viewer. It is super fast; it loads the whole folder into memory when you click on a photo, and then you can page through them, full-screen, using the arrow keys. Moving the mouse to the edges of the screen gets you different menus, including a gallery slider (on top) and quick-resize and crop (on the left). Lots of hot-keys if you want to get really efficient.
• Fastone Image Resizer: Need to make a quick set of thumbnails from photos of various sizes and orientations, and rename them all with a “T-” prefix at the same time, while changing the .JPG suffix to lower case? This will do it in one step.
• GIMP: An open source Photoshop, full featured and powerful.
• Google Chrome: Google’s recent entry into the web browser wars. I like Firefox and its extensions, but Chrome simplifies everything (for example, there is only one text box for web address AND search, and it always knows which you are trying to do). Plus, it is FAST.
• Google Earth: Fly around the planet. I’m sure this has practical applications, but I don’t care. You can spend hours just looking for that secret swimming hole you found in Kauai, or trying to guess when the satellite image of your house was taken.
• Google Sketchup: Draw 3D models of things. Used this to re-design our kitchen recently. It helps to go through their online video tutorial.
• Open Office: The de facto Microsoft Office replacement. It is compatible with MS Office most of the time. I have also been using Google Docs extensively, but for different purposes; in short, Google Docs is good for sharing docs between computers and people, but it is far from full featured.
• Skype: Make free calls through the internet to other Skype users in your circle of family and friends. I got my parents up and running using Skype to video conference in no time.
• TVAnts: I’m pretty sure this is on the edge of legality if not well over. TVAnts is a video player with an associated directory that allows you to basically watch someone else’s TV. It seems to be geared primarily to sporting events. We don’t have a TV at home, so we used this to watch the Superbowl this year. We still get the ads, but I’m pretty sure we weren’t counted in the Nielsen ratings.
• Video Editing: I haven’t really played too much with open source video editors, but I’ll provide this link to a list of packages in case it is useful. We have been using the Flip video camera which comes with its own built-in editing software – very nice, if not professional level.

For the more geek-oriented

• Cygwin: Creates a unix-like command prompt on your PC. You can use this to download and compile source code or perform shell scripts on text files, which sometimes is the only way to go.
• FileZilla: A simple, straight-forward ftp client (and server).
• HTML-Kit: A nice HTML editor. I wish it wouldn’t keep bugging me to upgrade, but I find the interface otherwise very easy to use.
• XAMPP: Apache, MySQL, php and perl. Install this and you have a database-driven web server up and running in a matter of minutes. Use it as a “sandbox” before publishing web pages to the internet, or drive an internal server for a home or business.