The open source and free thread: reviews of what's out there

[Fallen Angel]

This is the thread of all things free, those really useful apps that do clever things...and best of all they're free! It's the home of all things open source and freeware. Found a free something or other you think the rest of the MasterWeb community should know about? Feel free to add your own review. If you want to rate the app and use the little 'MW' icons, we've added them to our smiley set so you can simply add them just as you would any other smiley.

[Fallen Angel]

Name: OpenOffice 2.0
Type of app: "Office" application
Available from: http://www.openoffice.org/
Who's it for: anyone who doesn't want to shell out for MS Office. It's multi-platform as well - Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux ("Linux"), Sun Solaris, Mac OS X, and FreeBSD.
Price: FREE!

Review:
Open Office is a fully fledged alternative to Microsoft's 'Office' suite. It contains Writer (word processor), Calc (spreadsheet), Impress (presentation creator), Draw (vector graphics illustration program), and Base (database). It's fully compatible with MS Office, and a lot of the time, apart from the toolbar buttons looking ever so slightly different, it's just like being in Office. Writer does just about everything most people use a word processing app for, and Calc's a pretty damned good alternative to Excel. Impress too has the same interface as MS Powerpoint, though there are only two templates/background with the default installation. There are plenty more available from OO Extras though, along with extras for other members of the OO family. Draw is a nice little vector drawing program that lets you export in a huge array of formats. And finally you get Base, and incredibly easy to use database app. It looks different from the MS Access interface, but it still has all the familiar wizards and basic setup.

I have MS Office on my PC and OO on my laptop and the two talk to each other just fine. When I installed it I don't recall reading the instruction manual or anything ? I just waded right in and started using it. Oh, and a cool bit - you can open any member of the OO family from within each application ? no need for all that tiresome clicking and selectinf to open another program.

OpenOffice can be downloaded directly from www.openoffice.org (free), or in the UK it's also available for ?8.99 from 8daysaweek  on a CD for Windows that contains a load of other open source and freeware apps too ? over 40 apps all on one handy CD.

Plus-points: It's incredibly easy to use ? if you can use MS Office, you can use OO. Free. Great support and an OO community to ask advice for those tricky little things and things that don't work quite right.

Against: Not quite as feature-packed as MS Office, but for most users it's features are more than enough.

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[Fallen Angel]

Name: Filezilla
Type of app: FTP client
Available from: http://sourceforge.net/projects/filezilla/
Who's it for: Windows users - NT, Win2K, WinXP
Price: FREE!

Review:

Easy to use FTP client. It can connect to almost any FTP server, even if you are behind a firewall or SOCKS proxy. Using an SSL connection or Kerberos, all traffic can be encrypted. It's got a site manager, drag-and-drop functionality a transfer queue to help you control your tasks. With the site manager you can store all your ftp login details, simply select the account you want to connect to, and away you go. File transfer is by the familiar drag 'n' drop interface and it's so easy to use I don't recall ever having read the instructions. I use a commercial ftp client on my PC and Filezilla on my laptop, and it may be my imagination, but I seem to get far fewer dropped connections and errors etc. with Filezilla.

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[Fallen Angel]

HUUUUUUGE list of open source and free stuff here: http://www.econsultant.com/i-want-open-source-software/