All your PC needs, at right price

Pssst. Want to save thousands of dollars kitting out your new computer? FRANCIS TILL writes that free software from the internet is just the ticket.

Let's start by saying, without hesitation, that a lot of what is free on the internet is junk.

You often do get exactly what you pay for, and much free software is faulty or exasperatingly infected with advertising programs.

Some of it is probably even secretly sending all your keystrokes to a 14-year-old Chechen hacker, just as you suspected all along.

The problem is that the programs that everyone has - the ones that work best and come with instructions - tend to cost a real bundle. Setting up a new computer with mainstream software can easily double the purchase price, particularly if you want to do anything fancy such as manipulate graphics, make a website, or generate a business presentation.

But you can, actually, set up your computer to handle almost any task without spending a penny, and three websites have particularly rich inventories of %freeware: Tucows, CNET Download.com and ZDNet, all with ratings and user reviews.

For some freeware, support is a drawback. There's no budget in freeware - that's part of why it's free - and so you usually cannot call the vendor and ask for help.

On the upside, most high-quality freeware is so popular, user groups are easy to find with a simple search engine query. Often, you can find answers to all your questions faster from a user group than from a "real" support centre.

The most popular user group for the increasingly popular StarOffice suite, for example, is at the StarOffice website and shows up second in a Google search using the phrase, user group staroffice.

And since StarOffice is probably the most useful piece of freeware online, it's a great place to begin this roundup.

Getting out of the Office: the Star alternative

Not long ago, most computers came with Microsoft Office applications bundled in: Word, PowerPoint, Excel and other productivity tools were included in the purchase price of the computer itself.

This rarely happens today, and as Microsoft moves into its new licensing regime, it's not likely to happen on any scale ever again.

There are piecemeal alternatives to Office products, but often they aren't fully interoperable (Microsoft planned it that way, some say) or full-featured.

Since most users want to have the capabilities associated with Office tools, robust alternatives to the standard $1200-plus spend for Office have been difficult to find.

Microsoft is locked into a kind of software war with a competitor, Sun Microsystems, however, and Sun has taken a page from Microsoft's old competition handbook: it's giving away a fully interoperable office suite for free.

StarOffice 5.2 software users can open and view files created in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, WordPerfect, and AmiPro - and Microsoft products do the same for files generated in StarOffice.

The complete package includes tools that are the operational equivalent of Word, Excel and PowerPoint, plus StarOffice Draw (a vector-oriented drawing module that lets users create dynamic 3D illustrations and special effects), StarOffice Base (a database management tool), StarOffice Schedule (think Outlook Organiser), and a special e-mail and discussion tool.

StarOffice also lets users generate web page documents and has all the web design power of Netscape's much-undervalued Composer tool.

There are no limits to how many times you can install StarOffice, or on how many computers. StarOffice 5.2 is a 79Mb to 105Mb download, depending on the features you select.

Rich/special media tools: videos and music

Windows Media Player: This one should have come pre-installed if you're running Windows, but if for some reason it's not on your computer, the download is free from Microsoft.

When you arrive at the website, Microsoft will tell you automatically what version of the player best suits your operating system. 1.2Mb download.

RealOne Player: RealPlayer is the most widely used streaming media player. There's a "best player" version for $US9.95 on the website but it also offers a free version that is perfectly adequate. RealNetworks has hidden the link on its main web page, though, so look carefully for it.

Once you've clicked on "the Free Player", you'll be taken to a page that offers both the actual free player download and a free 14-day trial of the paid product, so read before you click. An 8.6Mb download.

Flash Player: Web designers love Flash - some even build entire websites in it. It's free and self-installing.

Ignore the top-of-page plea to "download and purchase Macromedia Flash Player 5", though, and click on the link that says, simply, "Macromedia Flash Player". A 219Kb download.

QuickTime Player: QuickTime is the "alternative" rich media format, used by many sites that feature video clips. The player is free. A 505Kb download.

Adobe Acrobat Reader: Opens those pesky "PDF" files publishers use to retain original formatting, graphics and fonts. A 10Mb download.

You can also download a free version of a tool that lets you make your own PDF files out of just about anything - including Word documents.

Fineprint offers its pdfFactory software for $US49.95 - the free version puts a "made with pdfFactory" line at the bottom of each PDF page it makes. A 1.7Mb download.

Image manipulation software

The industry standard graphics tool is Photoshop, from Adobe, and it retails in New Zealand for $2199. Don't despair, there are free alternatives - Irfanview for everyday use and The Gimp for power sessions.

Irfanview 32: Irfanview is an image viewer that handles almost every imaginable file format, will produce thumbnail catalogues of all the images in any folder, and lets users manipulate images with a wide variety of filters. Download, install, then go back and get the all-plugins.exe file for filters. A 797.5Kb download.

The Gimp for Windows: Gimp is an enormously powerful and complex image manipulation program that does almost everything one can do with its ultra-expensive Photoshop cousin. Written by Peter Mattis and Spencer Kimball, Gimp has been released under the GNU General Public Licence (GPL) - the quick version of which means: it's free.

There are manuals and instruction modules online - many of which are printer friendly. A 12Mb download.

More recommended freeware

ICQ for Windows: A sophisticated chat and peer-to-peer file transfer system - 4.1Mb download.

Anti-virus: Avast Home Edition is Czech software, free for home users. It will do brilliantly for starters, but you will eventually want to upgrade - 9.9Mb.

Personal firewall: Zone Alarm 2.6 is a very effective tool that automatically blocks attacks from the internet (and lets you know about them) - 2.8Mb.

Website construction: Netscape's Composer and StarOffice both provide free tools for developing websites, but if you want something more robust, try Lorenz Graf's HTMLtool. It's shareware, good for 30 days and then it will ask you for $US25 - which is cheap for a tool like this at 10 times the price - 3Mb.

Terms du jour

Shareware is software that you can download, try and decide whether it's right for you.

If you like it, you pay a nominal fee for the full-featured program.

If you don't want to keep it and pay for it, a shareware program usually either stops functioning after a period of time or continues to work but will never have all the features that the full purchased version would have.

Freeware is ... yep, free. There are no strings attached to these programs, but you might want to send a thank you note to the developer.

Adware is also free, but the developers place advertisements inside their programs.

Most adware authors have ad-free versions of their software available for a small fee.

If you need help detecting and removing Adware software from your computer, check Ad-Aware, a free 880KB program available through CNET's Download.com and other sites.

Tucows

CNET Download

ZDNet

StarOffice

Download StarOffice

Windows Media Player

Real Player

Macromedia Flash Player

Quicktime Player

Adobe acrobat

Fineprint

Irfanview

Gimp

Gimp manuals

ICQ

Avast

ZoneAlarm

Lorenz Graf's HTMLtool

Ad-aware