Software Discussion - Flash- click on presentation to advance

This material on useful free software started out as a presentation to the board of a local charity library, the Drumbo Opportunity Centre. This centre is run on shoe string budget to replace a library branch closed by the local Library Board.
Useful Free Software
The links below refer to some recommended software.  A more detailed discussion is contained in a PDF. Please click here.
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# Web Link Hits
1   Link   Scintilla/Scite
Scite, an implementation is Scintilla is a cross-platform free editor useful for PHP and other types of web-based editing. Binaries are available both for Windows, Linux and other platforms. If you want the same editor on a number of boxes, this is
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2   Link   Notepad++
Interesting FREE windows editor that has some useful syntax highlighting for geeks. Windows only.
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3   Link   R Project
R is a language and environment for statistical computing and graphics. It is a GNU project which is similar to the S language and environment which was developed at Bell Laboratories (formerly AT&T, now Lucent Technologies) by John Chambers and col
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4   Link   Open Office
Open Office is the leading competitor to MS Office. The main elements are very useful. Only the database software lags the MS product.
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5   Link   Portable Apps
– a selection of heavily reviewed open source tools that work on USB keys
– NO impact on your operating system)
– most have desktop equivalents
If it is on portable apps, it should work reasonably well on XP and VISTA.
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6   Link   The GIMP
A bitmap graphics editor - very powerful
Like Photoshop on steroids
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7   Link   Mozilla - Firefox and Thunderbird
Firefox is one of the more useful web browsing clients
Thunderbird is an excellent email client with many possible extensions.
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8   Link   Pidgin
Pidgin (formerly GAIM) is a useful alternative to the various proprietary products from AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft. Pidgin can use most of the available protcols.
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9   Link   7-ZIP
This zip/compression program can handle most of the various types of compressed file structures, including those from the Unix/Linux environment.
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10   Link   Abiword
Abiword is a useful alternative to Microsoft Word, Wordpad, and Openoffice writer.
It is very light weight in terms of resources.
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11   Link   Primo PDF
PrimoPDF offers a useful PDF creation program. The software creates a virtual PDF printer.
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12   Link   BullZIP PDF
A very useful PDF creation tool - creates a virtual printer.
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13   Link   Sumatra
Sumatra PDF is a slim, free, open-source PDF viewer for Windows. It is standalone and much more efficient than the Adobe Reader.
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14   Link   Foxit
Foxit is a free (but NOT open source) replacement for the Adobe Reader. It contains limited annotation capabilities and other features that are missing from the free (and not open source) Adobe Reader.
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15   Link   PDFX Viewer
Another light weight PDF viewer with some limited annotation and manipulation capabilities.
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16   Link   PDFTK builder
Useful package for some editing jobs on PDFS.
– Splits pfds into single pages
– Combines them
– Adds passwords
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17   Link   Kompozer
KompoZer is a complete web authoring system that combines web file management and easy-to-use WYSIWYG web page editing. It is a bug-fix to the original free NVU.

KompoZer is designed to be extremely easy to use, making it ideal for non-technical computer users who want to create an attractive, professional-looking web site without needing to know HTML or web coding.
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