The world may run on Wintel (Windows and Intel) computers, but what we put on those computers is still up to the individual to decide. There is growing power online in the open source movement. Open source may only mean to some that it’s free to use such programs for most people, but the world changes when you take on some new skills. Consider that lovely group of people known as open source programmers.
For these rare and awesome programmers, there is no dogma about intellectual property. Intellectual property is only useful if you care about getting rich off of what you produce. And the best programmers can grow rich by adding value in major ways – producing an extra feature here and there is just a fun intellectual exercise for people of that ilk. And many don’t even care about being popular. After all, popularity is built on functionality. Great software talks in a loud, clear voice. Here are some programs that will work no matter what operating system you (and your clients) use.
OpenOffice
Who says Microsoft has to make you sign away your rights, just to create a text document or a spreadsheet? OpenOffice allows anyone to open and create Word documents, without having to shell out for Word. With a clean, intuitive design, you can download and be producing like crazy within minutes. It’s also great because having a two year old version of Word often makes your system obsolete. Who wants to pay hundreds of dollars every couple of years, just so they can open one or two “new” file name extensions? With OpenOffice, this idiocy is the only thing that’s obsolete.
Firefox
IE? What’s that? Firefox has taken the world of easy virus infiltration, popup ad bombardment and inaccessibility on anything but a Windows machine … and tossed it in the waste bin. Firefox is quick, stable, free and usable on anything more sophisticated than a toaster oven (and you never know until you try…). When even smart phones can get great features (and even user created add ons), it becomes pretty obvious that Firefox is a feather in the cap of the art and science of programming.
VLC
Have you ever downloaded a video, excitedly wanting to play it… and then spent three hours searching in vain for a codec, before giving up in frustration? With VLC, you never have to do that nonsense again, no matter what kind of machine you may be running. VLC is the Marine Corps of watching video on a computer. It can even adapt to your home network, and stream movies and television to your smart phone. There’s no worrying about compatibility on any front, so the process is pretty easy even for those of us who don’t have any programming knowledge about us.
Many people will never know there’s anything beyond the Windows and Intels of the computer world. But those who do will find a number of fascinating and useful cross-platform applications that may change your mind about the computer world.
