"Y'all were bigger than life!"

- Roy Clark, Recording Artist 

 

Welcome to BEL.com!

Make BEL.com your choice for all of your A/V needs! BEL.com offers the best in event production, equipment rentals, repairs, or new installations. Having problems with an existing installation? Let BEL.com handle the repair or provide a free upgrade estimate. Look around, and let us know how we can help you. We have many features and specials planned, so check back soon as we get them rolling.
 
Home
Never Underestimate FREE Software! PDF Print E-mail
Written by Nick Marques   
Thursday, 19 March 2009
For me, day to day computing consists of daily use of Adobe Production Studio, Macromedia Studio (now Adobe), and Microsoft Office. For all of my other software needs, chances are, there is a FREE or open source solution out there.

Typically, the first thing I do when I need an immediate solution for a task is search the Internet. Try it! Visit our friend Google, and type in: "CD Burning" +Freeware. Granted, sometimes you need to refine the search a little, by adding your OS to the end. I've found some amazing programs this way. Many of them, I began using years ago and can't live without them now.

Here are some of my favorites:

VirtualDub - A video capture and processing utility for Windows.
DebugMode FrameServer - A Premiere Pro plugin that allows sending to 3rd-party programs. A lifesaver when Premiere Pro doesn't support your codec.
GIMP - An open source alternative to Photoshop. It is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux/Unix.
UltraVNC - A remote desktop (VNC) server and client for Windows. It's fast and free.
OSXvnc - A VNC server for Mac OS X.
Xvid - An open source MPEG-4 codec, similar to QuickTime or DivX. It is also cross-platform.
OpenOffice - A complete multi-platform (and multi-lingual) office suite. It offers just about all of the same functionality as Microsoft Office for $0.
xampp - A complete Apache web server (with PHP & MySQL) for Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux/Unix.
VLC Media Player - A free media player. It is capable of playing just about any media type, including incomplete files. It can also act as a streaming server.
Mozilla Firefox - A cross platform browser which can be decked out and customized to your liking with Add-Ons
Mozilla Thunderbird - A cross platform e-mail client.
AutoGK - Converts DVDs, DV, AVIs to Xvid/DivX in one easy step.
Gaim - An open source, cross-platform instant messaging client. It supports AIM, ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, IRC, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, SILC, Novell GroupWise Messenger, Lotus Sametime, and Zephyr networks.
Fedora - A completely free Linux operating system.
Knoppix - A live Linux CD/DVD. Download, burn CD/DVD, boot to it. You'll have a completely functional computer in 5 minutes. You don't even need to install it - it runs from the disc!

I'll keep this list up to date with any other goodies I start using!

Last Updated ( Thursday, 19 March 2009 )
 
Next >
[ Back ]