Marcus Can Blog

If you don't like it, blame daddy. If you like it, well, that's by me – Marcus.

Online Freebies

Posted on | December 2, 2008 | No Comments

 

As previously mentioned, my mother’s 2 year PC remained almost in its pristine condition. Until now, the only files that got updated or added in it are pictures. And normally, it is always us who did the downloading every time we pay them a visit especially during December. The whole year round she uses it only to get connected to us through emails – thankfully she learned how to do it.

 

Having used it again for this week’s short vacation, I had mixed feelings when I discovered about its almost untouched state. I feel happy that at least she haven’t installed any bootleg softwares in it. But at the same time I feel a bit frustrated as it still obviously lacks MS Office, photo editors, file compression and other tools that I need to do a blog – easily, and also share pictures to my distant sister who always craves to see what’s happening back here.

 

So instead of wishing I had another $100 to shed for a genuine MS Office installer, my desperate mind remembered to check the web for what might be legally free so I can proceed with my business of blogging, editing, and uploading of pics.

 

Fortunately, my web searches became fruitful enough and with the help of my mother’s PLDT Vibe connection I diligently (mark this word) spent some time checking these freebies. The following are the result of my downloads:

 

*OpenOffice. This is an underdog with a surprising package compared to Microsoft’s Office. I’ve actually heard about this before from a friend who is an OSS (Linux) fan. But since I have a genuine MS Office software back then, I ignored the existence of a free OpenOffice. Now, after downloading the approx 150MB file, I instantly became a fan. I never knew that this free software will match that of its Microsoft counterpart. In fact, I’m now using its Writer (to do this blog) and I find the interface and features not so far apart from MS Word. It has all the basics such as spell checker, formatting buttons and what surprised me most it also has an autorecovery feature – no need to worry when the PC shutdowns after the baby pressed on some buttons intentionally or not.

 

*GIMP 2. It’s short for GNU Image Manipulation Program 2. I downloaded this free photo editor with the intention of just resizing the large image files for an easy Flickr.com uploading. It came as a surprise when I saw that this one is almost the same with my Canon photo editor. One cool feature I find is its ability to scale an image just by selecting the scale button and then dragging the corners of the picture. During the process a window shows the aspect ratio of your file so that one can stop at the desired size. The downside of this software though is that it’s a bit slow and cannot accommodate multiple files in an instant. File size: 15MB.

 

*VSO Image resizer. Now this one means business when the job is just about resizing. VSO resizes multiple files in a jiffy. Period. This one is highly recommended. File size: 6MB.

 

With these files I now feel that I’m getting hooked with online freewares (legit). I’m now actually looking for a free screen grabber but so far the one that I’ve downloaded (sreengrabberinstall.zip) seems to be a disappointment as its installation requires another file to be downloaded. Anyway, the three files I mentioned may be enough for now. Somehow, this just proves the cliché, “the best things in life are free.”

 

***

 

I said to mark the word “diligently” when using PLDT Vibe’s connection. Why? That’s because it did not perform to my expectation. My mother have a P999 plan and it’s supposed to have at least 500kbps (or even more) connection speed but upon using speedtest.net’s tester it only yielded 196kbps download speed. My Digitel connection at home can even match that at some point and my subscription plan is just for 128kbps. I have doubts now if I’ll change DSL provider next year. Ti abi.

 

 

Mood: 3/10Honks!

[polldaddy poll=1157486]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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No Responses to “Online Freebies”

  1. sampan
    January 2nd, 2009 @ 9:44 am

    I like canon-photo very much

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