Tired of Internet Explorer and Microsoft? I am. I used to be a staunch supporter of the operating system, believing that it was the best for compatibility, business and entertainment. Alas, those days are over. I used to be able to stand the crashes, almost get used to them, but after years of the same old same old, it’s time for a change.
1. Browser. What a difference! Internet explorer 6 and 7 are slow and buggy. Firefox is nimble, fast and less vulnerable to viruses and hackers. The change was astonishing. Not only was there a leap in performance and stability, but they browser itself can be so easily customized with thousands of free addons from the developer centre. Of course, Firefox is absolutely free! I can also tell you the good news doesn’t stop there - the change is fantastic news for web designers who are frustrated with making changes to code specifically for Internet explorer, because it has hundreds of bugs and doesn’t display sites as it should if it read the code correctly like most other browsers.
2. Email. From the same developer that produce firefox, Mozilla, comes their free alternative to Outlook express called Thunderbird. While the layout of the application is very similar to Outlook express, the improvement is in security. You can import all of your contacts that you already have in outlook express easily and you can sleep happy knowing that you are far less likely to get something nasty entering your computer via your email.
3. Office suite. Open Office has less security vulnerabilities than the Microsoft Office suite and best of all, it doesn’t cost a penny. While Microsoft is retailing it’s top office suite at an eye-popping £550, you can get similar programs for a similarly eye-popping £0! Unlike Firefox or Thunderbird, which are both designed by the Mozilla corporation, Open Office is truly open source since it is designed by unpaid enthusiasts and techies. The downside to this is that some functionality has been compromised and the office suite is not quite as smooth of MS Office, but the suite certainly doesn’t burn a hole in your pocket or open up your computer to hackers. It should also be noted that Open Office is 100% compatible with Microsoft Office - you can even save documents and files in MS Office formats! |
