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Just a notice before we discuss this week's column that I conversed about a situation with a friend wherein the friend's computer's hard drive crashed and there was no backup. Luckily, the data was retrievable. I say luckily because this dear friend of mine had very important data on the drive and some data, while not enormously important, was still nice to have (i.e. e-mail, vacation pictures and such). My friend also subscribes to this newsletter and knows me very well; enough to know that I nag people about backups often. So, my question to you, dear readers, is: Is your stuff worth saving? And if so, have you backed it up? And if not, why not? Backup now before it's too late.

Ever since the inception of home computers, there have been programmers who have wanted to share their software with others. Originally called "shareware", meaning share it all you want, the term "shareware" these days seems to have a "try before you buy" philosophy. Hence, the advent of "freeware", and there's lots of it.

The nice thing about share, or free, software is that you can try the software out without making your wallet feel lighter. Some people have always assumed they must pay for all software. The fact is, even programmers who make their programs for free distribution are not adverse to commerce. In fact, many of them have various means of allowing you to pay them, from writing a cheque to using Paypal. Sometimes all we want is a version of notepad that comes with Windows but better or an HTML editor, a fax utility, a dictionary, an image editing program, an accounting program and so on. Most of the software you can even think of has a free or trial version of it available. But where do you find such things?

Some people always start with a search engine. Go to your preferred search engine and type in things like "free accounting program" or "free html editor" or whatever you're looking for and you're bound to find one. You can also go to sites that are dedicated to the free or trial software. For example:

• Betanews.com provides a huge library of software that is mostly trial-based, but often has free software. There is an enormous variety of software in their forum; so much so, that they provide a Search box that allows you to search for a program in their library
• C-Net provides a software repository of great profundity. When I want utilities or handy little programs, this is one of the places I look. For example, you may not know who makes Ad-Aware, but you can find it at this site.
• Freeware Home is interesting site that provides all sorts of commercial software for free (it's usually a bit dated but may still be very applicable to your needs) and non-commercial software. It even has pre-made Excel sheets for specific needs.
• Sourceforge is a gargantuan site for absolutely free software. Programmers use it as a source to make their programs freely available. This site is actually a little more technically-oriented than some of the other sites, but is well worth looking into.
• Sysinternals has all sorts of free software for network administrators. They also sell enhanced versions of some of their software.

It should be noted that "free" doesn't mean poorly-made. I've seen countless commercial software that made me want to rip my hair out (or rather: rip the hair out of the programmer's head). However, that "free" aspect also usually means diminished support. Again, I've had commercial software whose support was anything but supportive. Some people have suggested that with free, or "open" software, there is little legal accountability if something happens to go wrong. The irony in that argument is that the world's largest software maker, Microsoft, has it included in their end-user license agreement (EULA) that they are not legally responsible in any way for anything their product does. Whatever the end result, there's nothing wrong with exploring your options and if you happen to discover that one of your options will save you hundreds or thousands of dollars, no one could blame you for investigating.

To that end, there is also the issue of something called the OSS: Open Source Software. OSS usually suggests free software, but there is more to it than just that: OSS allows other programmers to see their work, thus they can also improve upon it if they wished. Closed-source software is proprietary, making you hope the company you bought the product from did their best to make it. There is nothing wrong with closed-source, but it's advantageous to see the pros and cons of both.

The software is also usable from home or at offices. For example, Mozilla has a calendar project called Sunbird (which can tie in with Firefox and Thunderbird) that, while using another OSS project called WebDAV, will allow the use of shared calendars across a network, including the Internet. These free programs can replace the likes of Microsoft's Outlook/Exchange setup.

How long will this free software be around? Some people have used shareware that they acquired in the DOS days and still use it. The OSS movement is becoming stronger every month. Lastly, there will always be those programming hobbyists who just want to make things a bit better and aren't in it for the money.

As can be seen, the market has projects for the small and large. Whatever you're looking for, you can check sites that are software-specific sites or just use a search engine. Both have provided countless people with countless rewards.

Next week, we'll talk about buying hardware from stores, like mice, monitors, and anything in general, and how to deal with the sales guys who seem to want to help you until you are perfectly happy with your purchase, so long as your purchase is the one they want you to buy.

If you have any comments, questions or concerns about this newsletter, feel free to e-mail me at sean@beggs.ca.