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If you are one of
those always-wanting-to-spend-the-money types who work in the IT
department of a multinational that has billions to spend on IT, you can
stop reading now. This article is not targeted at you.

But if, on the
other hand, you belong to one of the small or medium enterprises that
constantly need to justify cost, the question must have arisen before:
where can I get XYZ program that will not cost an arm and a leg? Truth
is that, in Nigeria, some just plunk down to Otigba and buy the
software for N300.

But that is piracy, deemed to be a crime, and a serious business cannot afford to take that route any more.

But before you pay
another kobo to Microsoft or another software publisher, consider
whether you can use a free or open-source application instead. Just
about every commercial application you use on a daily basis has an open
source alternative.

The most well known
open source software is the Operating System which serves as an
alternative to the almost ubiquitous Microsoft Windows operating system, Linux. However,
because of the fact that just about every computer you buy from a
vendor already has Windows pre-installed, there is no need to switch
from that. You have already paid for it when buying the computer, and I
am not quite sure that PC Outlet or any of the other major computer
vendors in Nigeria would refund the N12k plus that a Windows license
costs nowadays. In any event, there are a lot of other applications
that need to be installed, and paid for.

Whether you are
looking out for your small business or personal computing needs, the
open source community delivers excellent applications that are
completely free of charge. In most cases all you need is a working
Internet connection to download the software and you are home free.
Using these applications can save you loads of money. The poster child
for free and open software in the Windows world for the past few years
has been Mozilla’s popular browser, Firefox. Ahh, those young ones who
spend a lot of time on Facebook must be nodding their heads in
agreement right now. No other open-source software has taken the world
of software by as much storm as the little browser, and none has been
as successful in winning converts. But in an office environment, a
browser is not the most important thing so let us start from the basics.

Anti virus

In my experience,
this is the single most important piece of software that you need to
have on your computer, and quite often, the most overlooked. A lot of
people on popping their new computer out of the packaging take a look
at the Norton or McAfee that ship with the computers, and believe that
they have protection.

Rain check here,
these factory installed anti-viruses while having their own merit have
one fatal flaw; they are time-bound. In almost no time at all, you’ll
find that your copy of Norton has expired, and to continue to receive
protection from software you have to subscribe, for a fee. To get
around this,I advice
uninstalling those software and getting either AVG or Avast
anti-viruses. They are very good programs (AVG has been ranked highest
at Cnet.com forever now). AVG has an integrated spyware suite. Another
program that is fit for purpose is Google’s anti-spyware offering.

Office and Productivity Software

The next thing you
will need in your office is your productivity software, and this is
where Microsoft’s Office Suite is king. But the question is can you
afford the licence to buy six copies of Office for your computers? No
worry needed here-OpenOffice.org (OOo) has been around for many years
as a feasible substitution for just about any operating system. It
includes Writer for word processing, Calc for spreadsheets, Impress for
presentations, Draw for illustrating, and Base for databases.

OOo is pretty much
a copy of MS Office 2003, with a few improvements such as support for
Microsoft’s OOXML format that later versions of MS Office default to.

However, unlike MS
Office, OOo does not include an email client (Outlook). For an email
client like Outlook, you can download and use Mozilla Thunderbird. You
may even consider Mozilla’s SeaMonkey, an all-in-one Internet suite
which includes a browser, email and newsgroup client, HTML authoring
program (Dreamweaver), and chat client.

Scribus is an open
source substitute for Microsoft’s Publisher. It does offer page layout
control and provides professional publishing features, such as CMYK
color, separations, ICC color management, and PDF creation. Some people actually use it as a replacement for CorelDraw.

Photo/Video Editing

For an open source
alternative to Adobe Illustrator, there exists Inkscape. It’s a vector
graphics editor similar to Illustrator and CorelDraw. For those who are
Adobe Photoshop users, there is the GIMP.

Kino can substitute
for the video editing application Adobe Premiere, while PiTiVi is an
excellent video editing program for those who just want to do the
simple stuff.

Again for amateur video producers, try Avidemux. It still supports editing AVI, MPEG files, MP4, and ASF using a variety of codecs.

Money Management and Accounting

My personal
favourite in this category is Eqonomize, but I’m not quite sure there
is a Windows version. Grisbi is more for simple personal accounting,
suitable for the family budget, similar to the commercial products MS
Money and Quicken.

GnuCash is a
personal and small-business financial accounting application. It offers
more-advanced features, as in PeachTree and QuickBooks. GnuCash
supports import from both Microsoft Money and Quicken. Also it can
communicate with your bank accounts, though this feature is hardly used
in Nigeria.