Okay, so you have a computer and you maybe have software, but do you have the goods? Are those applications doing the business for you? You have the basics but now you are thinking of getting more software, more specialised applications. You probably have a digital camera, a printer, a phone with music playing ability, a Hifi of some kind , and maybe a small Mp3 player. Ok, some of those then. Well done, you are a citizen of the digital era. But why are you still paying for your software?

Mention free software to anyone nowadays, and they will say NO Thanks! You get what you pay for. Fine, but did you pay for Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Opera, Pavarotti or whatever that browser is you are using right now? (Pavarotti?) We all know and probably have used Microsoft Office and it is an amazing thing! How many millions of people are using it? Hundreds? Thousands? Yes, I use the student version, it rocks. Ahem. Any one ever tried a free Office Suite?

OpenOffice 3 (www.openoffice.org) is an amazing package of applications (a free version of what looks like Sun Microsystems Star Office) that does the same as MS Office and Works, for the basic things we use. Word processor, Spreadsheet, Presentation software. It consists of BASE, an information and data manager, CALC, a superb Spreadsheet that does just everything. DRAW lest you create drawings, logos and flowcharts. IMPRESS lets you create presentations for slideshows, meetings and web pages. (Has anyone ever looked at the way this could be used to advertise things on a screen?) It also has MATH that edits and creates scientific formulas and equations. This does a very decent job of helping to crunch numbers for those of us that have a need. WRITER is the word processor for writing anything from a book to letters, documents, reports or web pages. Are you thinking of writing an eBook? A whole book, of many pages. OpenOffice will let you write a full one, not just restricted to one page. Saving it as a PDF format is a cinch, and since PDF is a world document standard on the net, this is a superb feature to have. (For very advanced eBooks with advanced graphics and navigation around the document or article, more specialised software is called for.) Turning documents into web content is so easy too. It’s MS file compatible. And it’s free as the air you breathe!

EPIM. What is this? Essential PIM (www.essentialpim.com.) is an Outlook – substitute. Clone. Whatever. An event manager cum diary cum organiser with email support. It is free, and I love organising my life on it. Meetings, anniversaries, events, notes editor (mini Word processor!) Calendars galore, (choose daily, weekly, monthly, yearly views). It allows for a large quantity of phone numbers, web and email addresses, and business or personal details for keeping a record of things, including photos of contacts! Neat! (Tip, get screen grabs of maps that give directions to business addresses or places in your contacts and stick them in the photo area! Now you know where they are and can navigate to them easily.) The new version will now let you email your contacts directly. It has multi-lingual help documents. Essential PIM is free. It’s all good! And that’s what counts here! Reliable software that doesn’t crash or run home to momma!

Mind mapping fans who want to have a free version of some good software can look no further than Edraw Mind Map V4. This is amazing! It’s free, and its quite extensive, very Apple-looking designs and icons are very cool. In visual software like this, looks are everything, and Edraw got this one right, allowing you to achieve all you need for nothing. Not a dime. I’m such a cheapskate!

We have all seen calculators that are free or shareware on the net, but what about one that really covers all the bases? Try SCI Calc. It has a bewildering set of full features, and more surprises in the help features, and specific calculators within calculators which do very precise calculations, in finance, physics, measurement, science and more. Its free. And any student and number cruncher out here should really check this out!

Mediacore CRM is a basic free customer relation management package that does the basics well; it has an easy to use interface, needs a minimum of learning, and does nicely.

Setting up your own business? Thinking about a Business Plan? Have you tried Palo Alto Biz Plan? (check www.paloalto.co.uk.) This is a very surprising and brilliant free software package, full of nice surprises. Major clever designs here. The calculators have controls that allow sliders to be moved after you key in data, letting you instantly see other scenarios without having to retype info in twice. Shades of Intuit Quicken here methinks. The graphs are excellent, and I found links to 60 other free business plans to choose from. I rather like the plan for opening a coffee shop! I mean, how hard can it be? All I need now is to find someone to loan me the money, the coffee beans, and an Espresso Machine! Mocha anyone?

Atlantis Nova. Sounds like a film or a Disney Cartoon. No, it’s actually a very serious Word Processor with major pedigree. (Check www.atlantiswordprocessor.com.) Download it for free, and then be amazed at what it can do. The views are way better than MS Word, and if you double click the CTRL key, even more icons for more tools appear. Text manipulation is the name of the game here, and Atlantis delivers. This is the free version of a commercial offering that HAS to be a serious rival to MS Word. Why has no one heard of this? You have now!

Do you want to go mad converting one kind of measure into another? Converber is your only man. And no, thats not a typo! (Check it on www.xyntec.com/converber.htm.) A screen divided in 2 parts – you click the measure you want to convert, the middle bit says what range it falls under (volume, finance, area, energy, distance, light, weight, mass, the list goes on...) and you are given a veritable panoply of options into which to convert. Simple and almost boring to look at – but it works, and its free. You can make the application semi-transparent, so can use it in the same space as another application like Word processor or Spreadsheet.

When you have been around hubs long enough, you will start to become more web-centric, and familiar with terms and their respective applications. Ok, if you can’t afford Adobe Photoshop, try free GIMP. It does pretty much the same job, and it’s a graphics user’s delight. Artist and Photographer alike will appreciate its usefulness, fixing photos and art the way you want. As will Magic Photo Designer. This free software has a nice set of tools, art materials and filter effects that can instantly improve weary looking pics that need sprucing up. Check it out at:

http://www.magix.com/us/free-downloads/free-software/xtreme-photo-designer/?partnerid=9015

OPANDA and Optik Verve have similar abilities to each other. They improve photos and art further, as only Photoshop would. Opanda Photo Filter 1.0 (at www.opanda.com) is a set of filters that gives you a lot of control over colours in your work, and can save in all the important formats. Choose Hoya, Cokin or Kodak colour filters and see an explanation of what each filter does and how it affects your photo. The interface is replicated to resemble the Mac OS10 format, even has the mac window shade buttons. Yes, it is free.

Optik Verve is different. You can as a Photoshop user, load Optik Verve as a set of filters in your software (it also acts as a plugin for other applications too). A friend laughed at the prospect of this working – then a few hours later told me, not only was it fantastic, on new Photoshop, he got it working on old Photoshop 6. What the heck is he still using that for? It lets you choose either fast or slow film (make images more grainy and artistic!), choose themes like warm, cool, sepia, old-fashioned, and more. Curiously there are separate effects to choose for Black and white photography. Increase contrast, or just midtones, lighter lights, darker darks. All done instantly, and simply. Anyhow, its freeware! And it does the best job of all the applications I looked at for Art and Photography! Top marks! And costs nothing. Try it for free - click on www.optikvervelabs.com/.

Serif WebPlus SE is a new free application available to download and use. It’s a watered down version of a commercial version that kicks Dreamweaver Butt! The SE version is still jammed with cool features that make web creation a joy! Probably the best and easiest free version of any web design Wisiwig application I ever saw. Littered with cool features, you could try re-edit a provided sample template site, (try the coffee site! Hell, try a coffee for that matter!) Or just start from scratch, and have a design in no time. Room for RSS feeds, photos, art, ad banners, flash, java, tables, audio, ecommerce basics (advanced ecommerce available in the full version.) The old versions of Webplus will all load ok in this new title no problem. I give this a Gold Star for Excellence! I learned a lot from the Help and Tutorial Documents here too! There’s no charge. Try it on www.freeserifsoftware.com.

Open University (in Uk and Ireland) are teaching people on their web courses how to create web content using an application called Nvu. It’s a simple, no fuss, direct input web creator that does a simple job very well, and has nice help features included. It handles anchor points, links, images, tables, forms, and more. It has a Spellcheck feature in case your spelling is flaky. It has a site manager, and the “web preview”, HTML source, HTML tags and edit view are selectable via easy tabs on the bottom. A cool HTML editor. It’s free! (I used this once to create a HTML help document for an application we were using in the office, and NVu handled it easily. I got “paid” for it too.) Nvu is free. Check www.net2.com/nvu.

Another honourable mention has to be given to XARA 4, a free to use delight for web creators out there. Try www.xara.com/. (Xara bring out updates and new products all the time.) Since most hubbers are in the market, it allows you to make menus, adverts in the form of banners, 3D word graphics and Ads, and navigation bars, besides buttons, links, and other useful things to enhance any web site you are creating. Hubpages caters for most of these already, but I have used this a few times and find it good. You can preview your finished items in a browser before saving, to make sure it’s all good. More annoying is the constant need to key in a serial number Xara emailed me, it must be keyed in to successfully open the application. All to help cajole you gently into buying the item eventually. Well, either that or have a psychotic episode!

Tell me, do you get spammed a lot in your email? Ever wonder how those people are able to send so many emails en masse to so many people so fast? That’s some kind of email sending power, right? Wouldn’t it be nice to have that ability, yet instead of what is usually the case, you could use it for better reasons? A Marketing dream come true. Then check out SendBlaster Free Edition, a powerful multi-email sending application. The free version has limits on some features. But with this simple but effective application, you can create emails from htm, eml (email) files or from templates (which all look cool!), select a list of recipients from the built-in database (which is re-configurable), and launch your mailing! When mailing to subscribers, the software recognises new subscriptions, so it’s possible to send messages only to people who have never received it before. Addresses can be associated with “PostIt” style notes. Manage your contacts in the database, import data from external sources, export data to a text file, connect to your POP3 account, define “Blacklists” of addresses and domains to be excluded from mailings, (like people who don’t want to be emailed, thank you!) manage bounced messages, set passwords on your data, and the list goes on. Anyone who uses Intuit Quicken or MS Money will feel very at home here, it feels similar, the ergonomics are simple, elegant and functional. This isn’t just good. It’s fantastic! The free edition has some limits or restrictions, (limited to 100 emails, and 2 lists) but since this is free, and well worth checking out, I offer that here on the basis of having used it. I was very impressed. I am a convert, happily using the full version. Check it out on www.sendblaster.com.

Me – as a writer, I like to think that after having written that big novel I’m working on, (yeah right!) I will want to write a screen version of it, in screenplay format. (Just in case Hollywood comes calling. You know how it is...) But what, I hear you say, there’s no free software that lets a writer create screen treatments, unless you pay for plug-ins for a Word Processor, right? Wrong. Celtx is such an application, and it’s free. Its on www.celtx.com. It lets you jump instantly from one format to another in your Film screenplay or TV screenplay, (or stage treatment) as formatting is totally different from using a conventional word processor, and writing without software like this will give you heart ache. There’s no having to jump and change from one thing to another, (nothing worse than breaking in and out of a creative process!) and a nice bonus here is the inclusion of excerpts from The Wizard of Oz. You can see how characters are managed, and story and events and scenes all gel together. I feel the creators could have developed this software more, but hey – it’s free. And it will get you writing that screen treatment.

A similar application that is also free to use is YWriter 5, a word processor that lets you write that book you always wanted to get published. It’s like a writer’s character manager and event and scene manager all rolled into one. Programmed by a software programmer who is from Australia, with a string of hit novels to his credit. You won’t lose track of anyone in here! Unlike my girlfriend who has just popped off somewhere. I’ll have to put a bell on her! Find it on www.spacejock.com/yWriter5_Download.html.

Okay, which is better, Itunes or Winamp? Anyone with an iPod says Itunes. I say try Winamp, it has more to it! I am listening to it right now, and the ability to burn music straight from the application to CD is great; it handles the AAC format that Apple foisted on us all those years ago. The shoutcast and AOL radio stations are funs to listen to, I can manage and listen to podcasts no problem, organise my media on the player. Music lovers and creators alike will love the super crazy visualiations included, as well as choosing from the Bento style player or the old conventional players and styles. I especially love the MP3 of the Day feature, I downloaded Richard Swift, Royskopp, and a pile of other great free songs recently! Oh, did I mention that free music they offer now and then? The Equaliser feature is just fantastic! Shoutcast TV I haven’t got around to view yet. There’s just too much on this Winamp! Ok, just don’t tell Winamp I said that, ok? Oh yes, there’s a brand new version available, with new radio station streaming booted on. www.winamp.com.

Music fans are so well catered for with free software. Two freeware applications that do more or less the same thing are Audacity (www.audacity.sourceforge.net.)and Audioblast. On www.snapfiles.com/get/audioblast.html. They allow you to edit any audio you load in, then re-arrange, re-record, and add to it with effects like reverb ands echo and flange. Flange? What the heck is a flange anyway? Some people have used this software for a variety of purposes, including making ringtones. Frankly I don’t know how to do that, and there will surely be copyright issues there, so be advised, okay! (What the hell does flange mean?) Can I get a flange here please?

If you are a Windows PC user with perhaps Vista onboard, and you’d like to jazz things up a bit and make it all feel a bit more “Apple-ish”, try Softshine Screensaver. Truly dazzling and so beautiful...

On www.ab-archive.com/screensaver-softshines-3d/3. The beautiful effects are quite soothing; it can even run the amazing swirling curves and colours in the desktop with your icons and applications running on top. Check the new ones. They also make other interesting software too. Very attractive. Also worth trying is ObjectDock, a very familiar item to Apple users, its houses all your favourite applications on the bottom of the desktop, and move the mouse over each icon and they enlarge or grow. Just like the Apple dock. They bounce just like the Apple icons too. You can configure this to other parts of the screen too – even put the recycle bin there. Almost like getting a new pc, in a way. Try out www.objectdock.com. These are free!

The Google people are making massive inroads as software creators. Google Earth is the granddaddy of software applications that will whizz you around the world in 3D, and has that scary zooming in feature, that lets you see your own house or apartment in my case! (Waves to myself there!) (Wave at it on www.earth.google.com/.) Add photos of your favourite places, and add colored pins, or links so that others can see them and your content too! Google Earth is a triumph in how it has developed, with so many people now able to add content to it, allowing everyone to share what they have seen in attached Photos and links. The USA leads the initiative here. It is a head-turning, attention-getting application that any software vendor will be envious of. I could go on! Google Maps is another wonderful useful product. Any computer user planning a trip or holiday is gonna just love Google. They are so “out there”. Similarly, Google SketchUp is a very interesting 3D rendering CAD package that has a futuristic outlook for the mass audience and user-friendly tools. Design furniture, vehicles, machines, entire buildings, a street or a city on it. Just about anything you are capable of. All available for no cost.

In the Web mail free email provider stakes, Yahoo ought to have a lead over Google as they were around longer! My boss told me he had a Rocketmail account before it became Yahoo! I didn’t know that! Google however offer some nice goodies including no limit on the size of attachments, which is why this lady used Gmail! You can have instant links on your pc or Apple with A Yahoo navigation bar or Google bar, it basically lets you get something by means of one click. Firefox has a huge legion of fans, as does Google Chrome, which is very fast at uploading web pages, and Apple Safari, which is also fast. Safari has that cover flipping browse feature from Itunes. We computer users are so lucky to have all this free stuff to help make our lives that bit better! We tend to take some of them for granted. I can say that, right? I can also give credit where credit is due.

Well, I have only been skirting the tip of the freeware iceberg. There’s a lot more good free software out there to be found, used and enjoyed. Actually, I have one more treat for you to check out. Its the worlds biggest repository of free books which are digital in format, that’s eBooks to you. All free to read, all free to keep. How many are stored there? I’m not sure, as it is just &^%** huge out there: but I have downloaded all the great classics here and I am going through them slowly! Project Gutenberg is it, an A to Z of all great books, many out of print, but worth reading now. Check on www.gutenberg.org/. The Strand Magazine never looked to well! Sherlock Holmes Stories as they originally appeared. Boy, books have sure changed over the ages. Of course Google (which I have no shares in, promise! Lol!) are now offering a similar service, allowing us all to read books online, having done deals with writers and publishers. Its hard to believe that we can now sit down at a pc and write an eBook with Openoffice and then publish it on the web and even sell it for money. (Well, we can all use some of that!) Which is where we came in here, I think. It’s vital to understand that all this software can help run businesses and earn money for you, if you know how to do it. Just as useful for the rest of us too.

That’s a kind of interesting reference point to where we Hubbers are now. We are all publishing on the web, all being so industrious and busy. I’m sure there will be many comments on this Hub, and even suggestions for other applications I missed. (I have a life!) Well, hey - that’s what your next Hub could be. (Sorry!) Most of these applications I listed are available on Windows and Apple OS 10 + and many are available on Linux! If you would like to read more about free software and shareware, check out a magazine called PC Utilities, it includes a free DVD of over 500 applications to try or use. The magazine also has a site to download from – at pcutilities.co.uk.

There are lots of people in the world making really good productivity software, and all scattered around the place. If some rich, smart and successful entrepreneur out there could gather together some of the titles mentioned here, (or similar) and combine them, merge them, and market them into a new-age type of “Office” suite of software, it could be a winner. We could all end up being a heck of a lot more productive. It’s a kind of fantasy wish I have. I live in hope. Some applications out there, however, still really bake my noodle, and I wonder what some features are supposed to do.

Okay, I’m done for now! Have great adventures using your recession – beating free software. (Recession? What recession?) Cheeky Girl has got to go! I think I feel a flange coming on! Have to use the bathroom, excuse me!