Free Software.

Here’s my must have list of free software. I’ve tried hundreds of programs but these remain on my system and are used frequently. Your needs will probably vary:

Firefox. In my humble opinion it’s the best browser, by far. If you haven’t tried it yet you owe it to yourself to do so. It’s more secure, more standards compliant, supposedly faster and definitely easier to use than IE.

OpenOffice - this incredible open source project from Sun Microsystems is almost a direct replacement for Microsoft Office. It’s a complete suite of programs, providing a word processor, a spreadsheet, a database, a presentation program – and even a mathematical function calculator for your engineering majors.

Evernote - I love(d) this program. It’s advertised as being your second brain and it’s true, but better. You just jot down whatever you want to remember and it keeps all that in a database that it searches incredibly fast when you need the data back. There’s a whole host of other features as well, including some incredible hand writing recognition, but I basically just use it to suplement my memory. Except it’s perfect in its recall. But there’s good news and bad. Good first - what used to be a $50 program is now free - kindof. The bad news, your data all goes thru, and is stored on their servers.  Not real thrilled about having all he things I want to remember in life, including passwords, credit card numbers, etc.. residing on someone else’s server.  And the free version is limited to 40 MB data upload allowance per month, while a premium version for five bucks a month ups that to 500 MB/month .   Have no idea what this translates too as I’m not going to use the new version.  But make up your own mind. It’s well worth a look.

Paint.net - much better than MS Paint but not Photoshop yet.  However, it’s free and getting more powerful all the time.   I use it quite a bit.   If you need a more powerful app then try GIMP, but it’s interface isn’t real intuitive and I found it hard to figure out.

AVG anti-virus - I’ve tried quite a few others but prefer AVG for my personal computers, even over off-the-shelf counterparts like MS Live, and Norton.

Google’s Picassa - hands down the best program I’ve seen for organizing your photos.  And it also has some pretty good image editing abilities as well.  A must have.

CutePDF Writer - Have a need to create PDF documents?   I’ve found no easier way than this small free app which installs itself as another printer on your system.  To create a PDF file you just “print” it from whatever app you’re using but select CutePDF as your printer.   Couldn’t be easier and it hasn’t failed me yet.

CD Burner XP - it’s comrehensive, flows well, works well, and it lets me reduce the write speed so my CD drive can create CDs without errors.

As there are tens of thousands of freeware or open-source programs, you may find it useful to start your search at the follwing sites:
:
“101 Fantastic Freebies” from the PC-World folks in New Zealand.

SourceForge.net - This is where you’ll find virtually every open-source program written.  You can search and then sort by popularity in order to weed thru the thousands of programs available.

“The Best-ever Freeware Utilities List” form TechSupportAlert.com - I like this site because they do a good thorough job of selecting the best of the best freeware programs, probably becuase it’s a community based site with over 60 volunteer editors.

Free Printable Paper

Need a sheet of graph paper or music paper or a bowling score sheet but don’t have any handy?  You can print hundreds of different types of paper, for free, at PrintablePaper.net Very cool

Don’t forget shareware!

I may be a little biased here as I (the Geezer) have been writing shareware for over 20 years ( PC-Magic Software ) but oftentimes if you need something a step up from freeware then a shareware program will meet your needs, often better than any shelf-bought software, and usually at a substantially lower price.   And the beauty of shareware is that you get to try the program without obligation, usually for a month, before you decide whether you want to purchase it or not.

If you must buy off-the-shelf software then student discounts are usually very attractive.  In fact the geezer signed up for a class once primarily so he could get the student discount on a certain software package, saving hundreds of dollars.

Bank on it.

Geezer here again….

1. Buy and sell your textbooks online - at EasySchoolbooks.com

When the Cheap College Dude started going to our local community college I was amazed and dazed at how much his textbooks cost and how little the bookstore would buy them back for at the end of the quarter. I think he only got about 10-15% of what he paid for them, and he got to stand in huge lines for the privilege.

So I went looking for online textbook sites and found tons of them. It didn’t take long to realize that the best deals were at the auction sites: Amazon.com and Half.com. Supply and demand really does work. Both sites make it easy to buy and sell textbooks, and their fees are reasonable.

But I wanted a site that listed offerings from both sites so as to make it easy to compare and get the best deal.  I wasn’t happy with any of the sites I found. Either they didn’t give you enough information, provided no seller feedback ratings, didn’t list enough books, or were so clogged with ads it was dizzying. And a few even had outdated or inaccurate listings. So being the programmer I am I decided to create my own site. I was determined to make it the best on the web. It’s called EasySchoolbooks.com. I believe it’s your best choice for buying and selling textbooks because:

• We integrate Half.com and Amazon’s listings into a single concise page providing you with all the info you need to quickly evaluate your options and choose the best deal.
• The listings are fresh, in fact they’re gathered real time.
• No need to worry about third party shopping carts - after selecting your textbooks you checkout directly with Amazon and/or Buy.com.
• When it comes time to sell your textbooks, our Sellers area makes it easy for you to maximize your profits by showing you what merchant you should list with and at what price.

Often you can buy, use, and then resell your textbooks in such a way that you’ll be out less than the price of shipping.

Just visit EasySchoolbook and see for yourself. If it’s not the best textbook site on the web, or you have suggestions on how we can make it better, please let me know.

2. Some college libraries stock a copy or two of each textbook used during the year and will loan them to you for nothing. You’d need to jump on this early.

3. Cheap College Dude had a couple of classes that used special edition textbooks supposedly tailored just for his college. Check with your prof to see if the special edition is required. Often there’s no real difference and it’s just a gimmick by the book publishers to get you away from the online auction sites.

4. Textbook publishers seem to release new versions every three years or so thereby obsoleting older versions. Again, check with your prof and see what versions he/she will accept. Oftentimes the new versions only have incredibly minor changes, and profs, realizing this, will accept older versions. Those older versions can be dirt cheap online compared to the latest version - the old supply and demand thing again.

5. Conversely, keep in mind that if you’ve got an edition that’s probably going to be updated soon then you’ll have a harder time selling it online when you’re done with it and you might not get as much as you would otherwise.

6. Although I haven’t researched it, it seems to me that you would want to buy early and when it comes time to sell your textbooks list them early but high and then lower your price as it gets closer to the new semester.. Buying early will give you more time to look for good deals and there will probably be more stock available. Buying late will cause you to be bidding against all those other procrastinators thereby driving up the price on limited stock.

7. Give yourself 10 days lead time from when you order the book online and when you must have it. It usually takes the seller a day or two to ship it and then 5-7 days shipping before you get it. In reality, we’ve gotten most of our books withing a few days, but better to be safe than sorry.

8. Check your local bookstore buyback prices. Some are MUCH more fair than others. It could be that it makes sense to buy from and sell back to your local bookstore just for the convenience.

9. When ordering online, buy from sellers with positive feedbacks.  There are scammers everywhere, even in the used textbook market.

10. Read the seller comments on the condition of the book they’re selling as they can contain important information.

11. Publishers don’t like the online marketplace so they’ve started adding one-use extras such as CDs that require registering and online access codes that make it harder to resell textbooks once they’ve been used.  Congress is working on a bill that, amongst other things, would put some sort of limits on this practice.  Hold your breath.

Ask your prof if you need these extras.  If you don’t need them then you can save some real money. On the flip-side if the prof requires those extras then check the seller comments to make sure they’re include.  Keep in mind that books with the extras will command more than those without, so if you don’t have them, don’t expect to get as much when you go to sell your copy.

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Thanks!