The Best In Consumer Software

Okay folks, I throw this blog out there so that we can compare notes on the best software available for consumer computing use.

Over the last six months, we’ve all been reading about Microsoft’s settlement payments to Novell, Netscape, the EU, and others as a result of unfair competition practices. Basically, MS wants to own the operating system and all the software used on it. So they bundled and bought off competitors to shut down choice.

During this time, I’ve tried to capitalize on a primary benefit of having a PC: I’m not locked in to an integrated hardware and software system, like Macs. Here’s my list of the Microsoft software that I’ve abandoned for more powerful, secure apps. Let us know what you guys are using!

Okay folks, I throw this blog out there so that we can compare notes on the best software available for consumer computing use.

Over the last six months, we’ve all been reading about Microsoft’s settlement payments to Novell, Netscape, the EU, and others as a result of unfair competition practices. Basically, MS wants to own the operating system and all the software used on it. So they bundled and bought off competitors to shut down choice.

During this time, I’ve tried to capitalize on a primary benefit of having a PC: I’m not locked in to an integrated hardware and software system, like Macs. Here’s my list of the Microsoft software that I’ve abandoned for more powerful, secure apps. Let us know what you guys are using!

**XP Home/v2002/service pack 2**

Windows Media Player — Winamp, Nero 6 Internet Explorer — Mozilla Firefox MS Word — Notepad MS Publisher — Adobe InDesign MS Access — Filemaker Pro MS Money — Quickbooks Pro MS Draw — Photoshop, Illustrator MS Frontpage — Macromedia Dreamweaver MX

I’m wondering if there’s anything else out there for Word Processing, Spreadsheet, or E-mail?

About one year ago, I started sending all my working files to people in .pdfs. This means I now avoid sending native working files to recipients. It circumvents font and file corruption, as well as cross-platform issues. So, I’m not opposed to using powerful software that nobody else has, because everything is sent in a standard format (.pdf, HTML, etc.)

Thanks!

2 thoughts on “The Best In Consumer Software”

  1. The Big One

    You’ve left off the really big open-source application that handles all those MS Office formats natively: OpenOffice.org.

    It even “prints” directly to PDF. So you don’t lose the WYSIWYG factor of MS Word to get beautifully rendered PDF files.

    —
    Matthew P. Barnson

  2. vim

    Here’s *all* the software I use regularly:

    firefox (browsing, email) gvim (coding, writing blog entries) cygwin (system administration) IPython (well, python, duh) winamp

    The beauty of this setup is that everything is cross-platform, except for winamp, and xmms is usable on linux. Switching back and forth between OSes on my laptop is a piece of cake, because only a few window manager shortcuts change.

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