Dandelions and Daydreams

I think the addiction started when I started using Wordpress. It only got worse when I discovered OpenOffice.org and googledocs (okay so not quite open source, but it’s free none the less). I was in the market for a new laptop. I already had enough trouble buying one with Windows Vista on it, but I just couldn’t stomach the $200 price tag on Office 2007. I have happily been using my computer for a month now without Microsoft office. I actually ended up downloading StarOffice from google’s essential software pack. It is great for making the documents and then printing them from my own computer. One little glitch is that I can’t send them to another computer and open them on Microsoft word without losing all my formatting. Enter the power of PDF. StarOffice has the ability to create PDF files from my writer files. If I don’t want to do that, I can use Google docs to create a word file…or just create on google docs and share the file.

My addiction grew yesterday when I needed a program like photoshop. I looked around the web for open source photoshop substitues and came up with GIMP. The price was right (FREE), so I decided to try it out. I needed to do a logo design for a new website I am designing. I am impressed. It has all the functionality of photoshop that I actually knew how to use. GIMP looks like a great program for an amature who doesn’t want to shell out $300 or more for Adobe Photoshop.

I’ve come to the absolute conclusion that I may never need to buy software again. I just Google open source (photoshop, office, excel, etc) and then look for my program. As a safety measure, I look for reviews on a program before I download it. I figure if I can find lots of reviews from different websites on an open source program, I am *pretty* safe that it’s not malicious software.

Today IBM announced their release of free online office applications Lotus Symphony available for download here . Move over Microsoft, this is the age of Open Source