The Top Five Tools You Should Be Using on Your Computer

Microsoft owns the computer world. It's a fact that everyone has heard or has had to deal with at some point in time. Their software is expensive, unreliable, and unfortunately, the industry standard all around the world. While Linux isn't quite as user friendly as it needs to be to gain the support of users everywhere, there are a large number of programs that have reached that pinnacle of evolution, and provide a safe, reliable, and free alternative to everything Microsoft and it's imitators put out.

This is a list of the best software and services that you need to have. All of it is fully functional despite the fact that the developers sometimes claim they are testing. I use all of this software on a daily basis, and it all runs on Windows without a glitch.

1. Open Office (www.openoffice.org)

Imagine Microsoft Office without the $300 price tag. Think I'm exaggerating? With Open Office, you get everything that Microsoft Office offers, with only three noticeable differences.

First, the names of programs are different. If you wanted to write a Word document, you're going to have to use Open Office Writer. If you wanted an Excel Spreadsheet, you'd need to open Open Office Calc. Piece of cake.

The second difference is that the help feature on Open Office is pretty terrible. If you're at all familiar with Microsoft Office, however, you can find everything you used to use with that program on this new software with just a small bit of poking around, and all of the typical functions, like opening or printing a document, can all be found in their exact original positions.

The third difference is that documents you create with Open Office have different suffixes that Microsoft Office doesn't recognize. Before you start getting up in arms over that, consider that the fix for this simply requires you to save your files with a ".doc" or a ".xls" after it. Those four characters will save you $300 or more on the cost of software. Worth it? Most certainly.

2. Mozilla Firefox/Thunderbird (www.mozilla.com)