By Hamish MacDonald. UPDATEHamish has started a DIY Book podcast Back in 2000, I wrote an article for this website about how to produce your own book. Cutepdf Professional 3 3 Full Tested Adam' title='Cutepdf Professional 3 3 Full Tested Adam' />UpdateStar is compatible with Windows platforms. UpdateStar has been tested to meet all of the technical requirements to be compatible with Windows 10, 8. Windows 8. A hedge is an investment position intended to offset potential losses or gains that may be incurred by a companion investment. In simple language, a hedge is used to. Essential Pieces Of Free and Open Software for Windows. Recently, I received a fresh new laptop from Dell. Upon receiving it, I did the traditional installation of Windows from scratch on it to remove a lot of the garbage that is preinstalled on Dells. Then I got really busy installing tons of great software that takes care of pretty much every software need I have. Not only was all of the software free, every piece of it was open source, which means that the code is peer reviewed no spyware here What follows is a list of thirty pieces of software that are the cream of the crop of open source software for Windows. Not only is every piece of it free, almost all of them directly replace expensive software packages. Now, if only there were an open version of The Sims 2, I might go the whole way and switch to LinuxThirty Free and Open Software Programs Worth Downloading. Replaces Internet Explorer. If you havent switched to Firefox for your web browsing needs, do it now. It stops annoying popups and it has tons of amazing plugins that can make surfing the web even better. I could evangelize all day about Firefox, but one things for sure the first thing I do on any new Windows machine is run Internet Explorer just long enough to download Firefox. Replaces Microsoft Outlook or Eudora. Thunderbird is an email client that has five big things going for it its free, its full featured, its lightweight and runs quick, it has an unparalleled spam filter, and it protects you from those ridiculous phishing attacks by clearly indicating which emails send you to a bogus website. If youre not already using a web based email solution, Thunderbird should be your client. Microsoft Forefront Endpoint Protection Version History In Excel here. Replaces Microsoft Outlooks calendaring functions. Might as well get the Mozilla trifecta out of the way by mentioning Sunbird, which is the Mozilla Foundations calendaring program. Its extremely easy to use I figured out everything I needed in a minute or two and easy to share your calendar with others. I consider a calendaring tool to be essential if youre using a laptop, and this is no different. Replaces Microsoft Word. Want a good word processor but find Microsoft Word too expensive Abi. Word is my favorite replacement for Word. Its lightweight meaning it runs quickly and includes pretty much every feature that I use regularly in a word processor, plus it can save files in formats that you can exchange with Word and Word. Perfect users, plus open any of their files, too. Replaces Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Power. Point. If you want to replace the rest of the Office suite, your best bet is Open. Office. It includes very nice replacements for Excel and Power. Point and workable replacements for Access and other Office elements. In fact, I actually prefer their Excel and Power. Point replacements to the real thing. Replaces Norton Anti. Virus or Mc. Afee. Clam. Win is a slick anti virus software thats quite easy to manage and is unobtrusive while keep your system free of viruses. Thats pretty much all I want from a package, so why pay money for Mc. Afee to keep bugging me all the time Replaces AIM, Windows Messenger, etc. This is a very clean instant messaging program that allows you to be on AOL Instant Messenger, Windows MSN Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger simultaneously with one program. There are other free packages that do this, but Gaim is stable and clean and simple. Original but essential. From their website, Bit. Torrent is a peer assisted, digital content delivery platform that provides the fastest, most efficient means of distributing, discovering, and consuming large, high quality files on the Web. Our mission is simple to deliver the content that entertains and informs the digital world. In other words, Bit. Torrent allows you to download large media files and also use your bandwidth to help others download these files. Search for media files you want and download em. Replaces Adobe Photoshop. This is a version of the GNU Image Manipulation Program that does a pretty solid job of imitating Adobe Photoshop a regular user of Photoshop like me can adapt to it quite quickly. Its very richly featured and runs quite well in fact, I see no reason to ever go back, even if Photoshop were free. Replaces Lime. Wire, Bear. Share, etc. Sure, Lime. Wire and Bear. Share are free, but why not just get the same basic software without all of the spyware Gnucleus is pretty much identical to those software packages but without all that extra junk that slows down your computer. Replaces Windows Media Player, Quicktime, Real. Player, etc. If you get tired of having tons of media players on your computer, get this package that runs pretty much every media type youll run across without breaking a sweat. Unique but essential. Juice lets you effortlessly subscribe to podcasts, organize them, and listen to them at your convenience. In conjunction with Pod. Nova, I find it easier to use Juice to organize podcasts than using i. Tunes itself. Unique but essential for someIf youre interested in recording your own podcast or just want to make your own voice recordings for whatever reason, Audacity and a microphone are pretty much all you need to get the job done. Im not much for podcasting lets just say I dont have a radio voice, but I use Audacity for other voice recording purposes. Unique but essential. RSSOwl is one of many open source RSS readers. In other words, it enables you to use one program to keep track of the content of a lot of different blogs if you read a lot of blogs, its the only way to keep tabs on all of them without devoting hours jumping from site to site. If you have a laptop, its preferable to using sites like Bloglines, but if youre on a desktop, a web based feed manager might be better. Replaces Win. FTPMany people occasionally have a need to FTP files to other computers if you ever have the need to transfer files in such a fashion, File. Zilla will do the job slickly and quickly. Unique but essential. Keynote is basically designed specifically for the task of taking notes on a laptop. If you ever find yourself in a meeting or a presentation with your laptop open and want to jot down notes and organize them just a bit, Keynote is unquestionably the program for you. Its not good at quality word processing, but thats not the point. In my professional work, I find myself using Keynote almost as often as any other utility. Replaces i. Tunes. If youre not already committed to downloaded music from the i. Tunes Music Store, then Musik. Cube is the best choice available for a music organizer and player. It organizes your mp. Unique but essential. Handbrake enables you to stick a DVD in your DVD drive and have the contents of that film stored to your hard drive in a form that can be read by pretty much any media player. I often use it to put a few movies on my laptop for travel purposes, so I dont have to worry about keeping track of DVDs while on the road. Replaces m. IRCX Chat is a free IRC client. For those unfamiliar with IRC, its a place for technical people and, as my wife loves to point out, nerds to meet and discuss topics in an open environment. I often find it very useful when piecing through difficult technical issues. Unique but essential. Kee. Pass is a program that securely stores and manages the abundance of passwords we all use on a daily basis. I have literally hundreds of usernames and passwords spread out all over the place Kee. Pass keeps them all for me and keeps them safe. Unique but essential. True. Crypt enables you to convert a memory stick into a strongly encrypted data storage device, meaning that you can store personal data on it without worrying about losing it and having personal information get out and about. I use it to keep some of my most personal data off of my laptop and strongly secured, just in case. Replaces Adobe Acrobat. Use Sugru to Keep Your Expensive Gaming Equipment Safe From Kids Sticky Hands. Kids and electronics usually dont mix. I have more than one broken headphone jack and a missing i. Pod thanks to my siblings. With my family visiting this week, my younger sister will be looking for something controller shaped to play with and promptly demolish. So Im prepping my living rooms game controllers for the reckoning with some Sugru, the silicone and rubber adhesive putty that lets you customize basically everything you own. Well, I wont be customizing my current PS4 controllers. Those are going in a box. Im coating old Xbox 3. Sugru, making sure they can stand up to the challenge of actual children. The hardened rubbery Sugru will protect your controller from plastic breaking falls. In order for this to work, you need to figure out where to actually put the stuff on your controller, with all its curves and edges. A week or so has passed since schools been out for the summer, which means youve likely alreadyRead more Read. A quick way to figure out where to apply your Sugru is to lay your controller on a flat surface and see where the points of contact are. Those are the first spots that should get some rubbery love. From there, you can mold the Sugru into whatever shape you think is best. Putting some on the sides of the controller where the seams meet can prevent it from popping open or creating fractures in the plastic, and adding a bit on top of the joysticks will also protect them from dirty snack covered fingers. That few minutes of prep will save you some broken electronics and keep rambunctious youngsters satisfied.