Hi everyone. With the stall out for the first week of semester 2, we all thought it was time we got to posting some useful information on the website. I’m gonna kick things off with a list of three major free software projects for windows users.
These replace products like Internet Explorer, Outlook or Outlook Express, and Microsoft Office, and are all available on Linux, so if you start using these before making the switch, you’ll be even more comfortable when you do :)
Before I begin, I’d like to say that there are hundreds if not thousands of free software projects out there… These are just to get you started!
Firefox is one of the main competitors to Internet Explorer. It has versions for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS, and has been becoming increasingly popular over the last few years. If you want to make the switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox, you’ll find that it has a hand import feature so you won’t lose your important bookmarks. And once you’re addicted, you’ll be pleased to know that most computers in the University of Auckland’s computer labs have Firefox installed.
Firefox can either be downloaded from getfirefox.com, or through the ECE dept mirror: (download now, 8mb)
Made by the same people who make Firefox, Thunderbird is a solid replacement for products like Outlook or Outlook Express. Like Firefox, Thunderbird has an import feature to fetch settings from other clients, so migrating is painless.
Thunderbird can either be downloaded from getthunderbird.com, or through the ECE dept mirror: (download now, 8.8mb)
OpenOffice.org is an office suite with a similar interface to pre-2007 versions of Microsoft Office. It includes a word processor (Writer), a spreadsheet program (Calc), a presentation program (Impress), a drawing program (Draw), and a database program (Base). All free and regularly updated, of course. Some departments at UoA have OpenOffice installed on their lab computers, seek them out!
OpenOffice.org can either be downloaded from openoffice.org, or through the ECE dept mirror: (download now, 148mb)
The ECE mirrors have more versions, systems, and projects as well, and you can expect much better speeds from these if you’re downloading over the university’s internet connection. If you’d like to give them a closer look:
http://mirror.ece.auckland.ac.nz/mozilla/firefox/releases/
http://mirror.ece.auckland.ac.nz/mozilla/thunderbird/releases/
http://mirror.ece.auckland.ac.nz/openoffice/stable/
http://mirror.ece.auckland.ac.nz/