In the past, in a time long, long ago before tablets were invented anyway basic software used to come with every new PC or laptop. As prices dropped for hardware we started to get less and less free software. These days, we are lucky if we get a “trial” version. Trial versions can be activated and used for 30 to 90-days for free before they become inactive unless you pay for them and get an activation key. The manufacturer, usually Microsoft™ hopes that you will get attached to the software and that you will have created so many files using the trial version that you will motivated to pay to keep it.
This has many of us asking what do we really need and how much should we pay. The answer is different for different people. For most students, small business professionals, people working in trades, and casual users an email program, word processing program, spreadsheet, and maybe slide program like PowerPoint are all you will need.
Free email programs are easy to find on the web. IT professionals recommend web based email to reduce the risk of opening files with viruses as often happens with mail programs stores on your own machine. Other programs used to be harder to find but now the open source movement is changing that. Open source is a techy way to say not hidden. Many, but not all of the applications have been written by teams of programmers who have volunteered their time. Improvements are added as programmers offer them. Users test for free and provide free feedback to software developers while using Beta versions of the programs.
At first the programs did not offer very many features and were sometimes difficult to use. The files they used were sometimes difficult to share as well. However with the invention of the open document format this is no longer true. Most commercial applications will open documents and other files created using an open document format and open documents can be often be used across Windows, Apple, and Lenox operating systems. Many of these applications do everything the average user will need. Some of the applications are offered as web services, which means you have to have access to wi-fi to access, create, or edit your documents. Others, like Oracles open source application suite can be downloaded to your machine.
