You just saved a bundle on your laptop purchase but it only has the basic operating system software and purchasing the software to accomplish the task and have the productivity you were looking for is now going to cost you more then you just paid for your laptop. Well the good news is that today there are a number of alternatives out there that you can use and many of them are free. 

We all know that free is good, and there are some great alternatives to Microsoft Office out on the market today, some of which offer additional features that are not offered by Microsoft Like a PDF writer. 

So where do you find these free software programs and just what can you accomplish with free software anyways. There are a number of sites on the internet today where you can go and find very good software packages that you can use for free and are available by downloading them strait on to your computer you can be up and running in minutes. 

Create documents, spreadsheets and presentations online

• One great option you might check out is Google Documents and Spreadsheets  http://www.google.com/google-d-s/intl/en/tour1.html
•   There you will find the Google On-Line word processing and spreadsheet applications. One of the draw backs to this option though is you have to be connected to the internet when ever you want to use these application. They are very user friendly though and the learning curve is not that complicated.
• Share and collaborate in real time
• Safely store and organize your work
• Control who can see your documents
• Read user examples
• Get started

Zoho Writer is another free online word processor. www.zohowriter.dom. This to is a very good program and like google you will have to be on line in order to use this product. 

IBM announced in Sep 2007 that their Lotus Symphony Documents is available and FREE and has a built in PDF writer. IBM Lotus Symphony Documents   http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/home.jspa

“Lotus Symphony was voted office productivity software product of the year for 2008 by Datamation Magazine readers. In what can only be described as an upset, relative newcomer, Lotus Symphony, beat out Microsoft Office, OpenOffice 2.3.1, ThinkFree Office and other nominees by Datamation Magazine Readers.” 

Other free Office alternatives that are out there are:

ThinkFree Office is FREE ThinkFree Office http://product.thinkfree.com/office/

“Whether you work in Microsoft Word, Excel or PowerPoint, with ThinkFree Office 3 you’ll feel right at home because it looks, feels and behaves just like they do regardless of whether you use it on Windows, Linux, or Macintosh.”

Sun Microsystem’s Open Office is free and has been around for years and includes a very nice suite of applications and it too has a built in PDF writer. www.openoffice.org

So, consider the above and save a bundle. These applications all are compatible with the Microsoft applications as files can be saved in word and excel format. Before you purchase an expensive software package don’t you owe it to yourself to at least check out these products?

RR Smith

Used Laptop Deals.Com

The Windows version of Safari has a serious bug people are calling it the “carpet bombing” flaw. It allows a Web site to place an unlimited number of shortcuts and icons on a user’s desktop because this is the default download location in the Windows version which could effectively covering the screen with links to potentially harmful Web sites or programs and codes. This same flaw is present on the Mac version as well, the only difference is the default download location in the Mac OS is the user’s downloads folder as if that is any consolation.

One of the most disturbing things about this is Apple has said they don’t feel there is any need to address the issue right now. Apple said a fix may never be implemented! With a simple solution to this problem being to simply ask the user if they want to down a program before downloading Apples response was

“”…the ability to have a preference to “Ask me before downloading anything” is a good suggestion. We can file that as an enhancement request for the Safari team. Please note that we are not treating this as a security issue, but a further measure to raise the bar against unwanted downloads. This will require a review with the Human Interface team. We want to set your expectations that this could take quite a while, if it ever gets incorporated.””

An attacker would be able to attract users into visiting a specially crafted Web site that could download content to a user’s machine and execute the content locally using the same permissions the logged-on user gave for the original download.

There’s a limited solution to this even though it will not stop all threats it may contain most of them. By changing the default location for downloads in Safari to a folder other than the Desktop. You can do that by, clicking Edit, Preferences, the General icon, then click the dropdown next to “Save downloaded files to:” and choose a different folder.

Your best solution to this threat however may be to just Uninstall Safari and use an alternative browser on Windows.

***This information came from ZDNet New at http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1230 ***

RR Smith
New, Used, and Refurbished Laptops