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Mozilla.org. While you’re at that website, look into another of their applications called Thunderbird. Thunderbird is an e-mail client, which resembles Microsoft Outlook. It doesn’t have all of Outlooks functions when you first install it. The calendar feature is missing, but that’s about it, from what I can see. BUT… there’s an add-on for that… and thousands more to boot! Thunderbird is different than Outlook and most people are creatures of habit and are, instinctually, adverse to change. Do yourself a favor… download it and give it a test drive. The link is: http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/. We’ll be talking about the add-ons for that program, too! Finally, we get around to addressing Microsoft Office. Office is a really terrific program with lots of functionality that has helped all of us to become more productive people. The big problem that I have with Office is the price. The program, which comes pre-installed on most PCs, is limited to either a time-frame, where you have to purchase the full program within 30, 60 or 90 days, or it’s limited in it’s functionality – i.e. not all of the features are available to you. I’ve seen it both ways. There’s a FREE option, which could save all of us MILLIONS of dollars. How. Think about how many computers our government has. Each one of them has Microsoft Office. How much does it cost us to keep upgrading, purchasing new copies for new computers? LOTS! OpenOffice.org is both the name of the website and the name of the program. It’s FREE! It’s got most of the programs that come with Microsoft Office – the exception being Outlook. Of course they’re named a little differently. Word’s counterpart is called Writer; Excel’s counterpart is called Calc; Access is called Base… and so on and so on. There is a small learning curve, but when the program is absolutely FREE, you can see why the investment in time learning the different features can be well worth it. I’m not telling you all of this because I’m down on Microsoft, or anything like that. I’m telling you this because, as a small business owner, I have to watch every penny that I spend. In all honesty, I’m using a copy of Office that I purchased ten years ago and I’m noticing that there are documents that it can’t open, all of them created with the new MS Office. When I’m opening one of them, I use OpenOffice.org. If I’m spending money on software – I’ve got to pass that cost on to my clients. There’s some software that I have to buy, but whenever there’s a free solution, I evaluate it and make my decision fairly without a bias. I’ve found these programs to be extremely useful and just wanted to pass the information on to you! More from the Tech-Side later right here on VicksburgDailyNews.com]]]]> ]]>
