On this page I will keep you informed on all things computer.

Six Office Alternatives
In June Microsoft will release a final version of its Office 2010  productivity suite. Naturally many users will upgrade, at substantial  cost, to the latest version of the popular Office suite, but for those  not so eager to hand over their money to Microsoft there are still many  great alternatives. And they are free.

OpenOffice.org (http://www.openoffice.org)

This has to be the number one alternative to Microsoft Office. The  open source productivity tool includes all of the features offered by MS Office but for free. Version 3.0 of OpenOffice.org (OOo) was released  in late 2008 and since then a number of update releases have been issued to fine tune its features.

OpenOffice.org includes full compatibility with documents created in  Microsoft Office, the biggest stumbling block to switching to a new  office suite. And the latest version of OOo has full compatibility with  Microsoft's newer .docx format files, those created by Office 2007.

OpenOffice.org includes a presentation tool, word processor, drawing  application, spreadsheet among others that can produce documents in both the OpenDocument format as well as most other popular document formats. OpenOffice.org 3.0 can't save files into the .docx format but it can  open them.

ABIWord (http://www.abisource.com)

ABIWord is not a full office suite, although together with other  applications such as Gnumeric, it can function as a Linux office suite.  ABIWord is a more than capable word processor, however, which is both  lightweight and runs on Linux and Windows natively.

Mac OS X support is limited. Being lightweight, ABIWord is pleasantly fast in comparison to suites such as OpenOffice.org and Microsoft  Office. The most recent version of ABIWord - version 2.8.0 was released  in October this year - includes support for Office 2007 formats,  collaboration features for sharing documents as well as inline  commenting and notes. Version 2.8.0 also has an improved interface which includes multipage views, as well as support for importing scalable  vector graphics.

Google Docs and spreadsheet (http://docs.google.com)

So much of the Internet is dominated by Google that it's not  surprising that one of the better Office alternatives applications is  from Google. The company's Google Docs and Spreadsheets was first  launched in late 2006 and is already very popular among users keen to  shrug off Microsoft Office's domination.

Working with Google Docs is pretty straightforward and intuitive and  mimics the more popular office applications already available, so the  learning curve is pretty low. Google Docs has good revision control  which means authors can view changes made over time to the document.  This is also useful when sharing a document with multiple authors which  Google Docs does. One of the advantages Google Docs has is that Google  already has an extensive registered user base for its other products  such as GMail, so using Docs is a just a click away for most users.

As with most online office applications Google Docs is highly capable but not 100% Microsoft Office compatible. Which means that it is  perfect for most everyday uses such as writing letters, crunching  numbers and storing data, but when it comes to complex spreadsheet usage it will occasionally fail. If you're the financial director of a  multi-national corporation you're better off with a heavyweight  spreadsheet. But if you're a home user or small business it's worth  checking out Google Docs.

ThinkFree Office Online (http://www.thinkfree.com)

ThinkFree is an attractive alternative to Google Docs which includes a word processor, spreadsheet and a presentation tool along the lines of  PowerPoint. ThinkFree's applications are extremely rich in their  functionality and can open and convert documents into a range of  formats.

Even without a user account users can use ThinkFree.com to view and  convert documents. A Word document on a local drive, for example, can be viewed using ThinkFree's viewer before being converted into a PDF or  text document.

With a user account, however, ThinkFree comes alive and lets users  store their documents online, create new ones or share them with  colleagues. Sharing documents is one of ThinkFree's key benefits as it  makes it easy to invite fellow users and manage the flow of documents.

Earlier versions of ThinkFree were a little slower than many of the  other services available but this does appear to be improving, although  there is still a natural lag in opening and saving documents. It does  depend on the document being edited, however, and sometime the lag can  be annoying.

Zoho (http://www.zoho.com)

While ThinkFree Office does a few things exceptionally well, Zoho  does an exceptional number of things well - which makes it hard to  compare to Google Docs and ThinkFree. At last count Zoho offered more  than 20 online applications to meet just about every need, from online  chat to project management to email to word processing.

The downside of the sheer number of applications on offer from Zoho  is that its individual components tend to be less capable than some of  the other alternatives. Which is not a problem if your needs are fairly  basic but if you need to be opening multi-sheet complex spreadsheets  with Zoho you're probably going to struggle more than you would want to.

The upside is that Zoho applications are quick when dealing with  straightforward documents although saving them often has a noticeable  lag. Zoho's Writer application is speedy, more attractive than Google  Docs and it offers a wide range of file format options to rival  ThinkFree and Google Docs.

NeoOffice (http://www.neooffice.org)

Mac fans have a pretty good alternative available to them in the form of NeoOffice. The free office suite is built on the OpenOffice.org code but includes Mac-specific features that make for tight integration of  NeoOffice into the Mac desktop.

Until version 3.0, OpenOffice.org never offered a native Mac version  of the office suite, which is why NeoOffice was released. With the  release of a native version of OpenOffice.org for Mac NeoOffice's  popularity may wane but it is still worth checking out. Version 3.0.2 of NeoOffice is due to be released in early 2010 and includes a number of  Mac-specific improvements including native Mac OS X text highlighting  and smoother text kerning.

Firefox, Is it getting fat and bloated?
I first started using the Mozilla Firefox web browser way back in 2004. My reason for using it was simple - I hated Internet Explorer 6. Bear in mind that in 2004, IE6 was the latest browser from Microsoft. Firefox was so much better in every way. It was not susceptible to any spyware or malware whatsoever. It was blazing fast. It was easy to use. It was everything you ever wanted in a browser.

Firefox unfortunately is not the browser it once was. Today it suffers from the same problems IE6 had years ago. Firefox now is bloated and huge. It eats memory for breakfast, lunch and dinner with snacks in between. The speediness it once had is gone. Firefox now exhibits almost everything that sucked about IE6 to begin with.

Mozilla as a company has also done the exact same thing Microsoft did in the respect that they waited too long to release a major update. One of the biggest former complaints about Microsoft is that they did not release newer, better versions of their software often enough. Concerning Microsoft's web browser, IE, they're on the ball with that now. Each release of IE is getting better and the new IE9 should be a fantastic offering. With Mozilla however, Firefox 4 should have been released over a year ago, but is now tentatively scheduled for launch in November 2010. November? Seriously?

Just to give an indication of how late to the party that is, Google Chrome 5 is out now. Opera 10 is out now. IE9 will be here before end of summer. As for Firefox? Last to the party, and many are agreeing that it will be too little too late.

I still use Firefox as my primary browser, but I don't know...IE9 and Google Chrome 5 are looking really good these days...
 

Can Facebook be Trusted?
Recently Facebook rolled out another round of what they consider easy to use privacy settings. What they’re really doing is trying to appear as if they’re doing something to address major privacy concern from customers and privacy organisations.
Plenty of people are doing articles about the new Facebook settings but I’m really asking the fundamental question. Can you trust Facebook? Based on my observations the answer is no.
Facebook creator Mark Zuckenberg has a vision of the world in which we all share information. It’s no secret that this remains his basic philosophy and goal for Facebook. When announcing new privacy policies he wrote…

“Six years ago, we built Facebook around a few simple ideas. People want to share and stay connected with their friends and the people around them. If we give people control over what they share, they will want to share more. If people share more, the world will become more open and connected. And a world that’s more open and connected is a better world. These are still our core principles today.”

Even if Facebook were to change and make sharing an opt-in service, my experience says we still can’t trust Facebook. On that point, Mark Zuckenberg once commented on whether Facebook should have opt-in controls, “that Facebook is an opt-in service already, you sign up for an account and you have opted-in.”

I reluctantly continue to use Facebook to keep my eye on them and write about it. If they do something good, I’ll write about that as well.