Free software provides all you need for laptop

I thought you might enjoy this vignette I received from a doting grandfather.

After purchasing a top of the line laptop for his granddaughter the doting grandfather discovered an empty pocket book denied him the funds necessary to also provide the state of the art software that in combination with the laptop would qualify him as a truly extraordinary doting grandfather.

But because he was a tenured Good Booter, he recalled my articles on quality free software and as he put it, was able to stock his granddaughter’s laptop with all the software she would need to begin a productive computing adventure at a cost of less than $100.

The following is a partial list of the software he installed:
1. OpenOffice: A free state of the art office suite that includes word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics and databases. It works on all computers and can read and write files from other common office software packages e.g., Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access.
2. Picasa: A outstanding free digital photo program to organize, manage, turn photos into movies, collages, slideshows and share them as Picasa Web Albums
3. IrfanView: A free very fast, small, compact and innovative graphic viewer.
4. Photo Story 3: Microsoft’s free software program for creating slideshows using your digital photos. With a single click, you can touch-up, crop, or rotate pictures. Add stunning special effects, soundtracks, and your own voice narration to your photo stories. Then, personalize them with titles and captions. Small file sizes make it easy to send your photo stories in an e-mail. And you can watch them on your TV, a computer, or a Windows Mobile-based portable device.
5. Sonic (www.sonic .com) Add this $19.95 plug-in to Photo Story 3 and you can burn your slideshows to a DVD.
6. Paint.net: A free software program that includes simple tools for drawing shapes, splines and Bezier curves, a Gradient tool, Magic Wand, Clone Stamp, text editor and a Recolor tool.
7. Ashampoo 7: A $39.95 user friendly uncomplicated CD/DVD/Blu-ray burning program to
"Burn Files", "Backup Files" and "Burn Movies".
8. Audacity: A free, user- friendly audio editor and recorder for recording live audio. convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs.

I can attest to the quality and usefulness of our doting grandfathers software choices. So if you want to become a doting grandparent or for that matter stock your computer with useful free software, I suggest you investigate these outstanding software programs.

Here’s wishing you a Good Boot.