Read This!, Basically Micro$oft have ‘borrowed’ the ‘object test bench’ a feature in blueJ which allows you test the java objects you create, you can see a comparison here. The authors didn’t mind originally but now Microsoft are patenting it and effectively claiming the idea as their own. I’m not sure if the idea was blueJ’s originally but what is clear is that blueJ (if the patent goes through) will have to charge for the software which would ruin the point of blueJ. BlueJ a cross platform java developer while microsofts visual studio alternative locks developers into a windows environment.

I’m posting this because blueJ is partly developed at the university of kent, my uni! and I’ve recently started learning java with blueJ, so this is relevant to me!

With Vista coming out (yes, I have my free business version already from the MSDN!) Microsoft are definitely in the headlines but unfortunately for them the majority of it has been bad press. Firstly because of their new ‘open standards’ which aren’t open at all and their now being sued by a whole load of companies because they’ve broken a law that was passed three years ago in the EU when they tried to block all third party applications on their system programs such as mcafee and norton, media and audio playing software. Also they’ve launched a new website programming language trying to displace the industry standard HTML, this language wont work on other operating systems though!

I know some people support Micro$oft and even like their software, but you can’t condone their monopolizing of the market. Everyone has the right to use their own operating system. I know Apple isn’t a viable solution for everyone (just because of the expense) but consider linux. You may think its confusing but really its not.

So you’re an average windoze user, what do you use your computer for?

Heres my usage of computers (I’m not an average user so imagine how easy and free it would be if you only browsed the net and made the odd spreadsheet!)
1. Internet browsing.
2. Presentations, Spreadsheets and Word Processing for Uni.
3. Designing.
4. Programming.
5. Playing Games.
6. Instant Messaging.
7. Music and Movies.

I can’t think of anything else I’d do with my PC, and now I’m going to show you how you can do all this for free, if you need a specific piece of software for free - use google!

So, Internet Browsing firefox is available on windows, linux and mac. As is Opera.

For Office work Open Office is a free alternative for Microsoft office if your using mac a great port of it is Neo Office.

For Designing theres the gimp it may have an unfortunate name but its a great piece of software. Then theres trusty photoshop, available (now natively) on the mac and windoze as well as on linux with a bit of creative poking and some easy googling.

Programming, for java theres the aformentioned blueJ and on mac theres the free xcode which is the same as visual studio on windows but free.

I’d like to mention here that nearly every program you’ll ever use will come preinstalled on many linux distros.

Playing games, I don’t play world of war craft but again with some googling you can find some great platform specific games for free or a modest fee or download an emulator and a few roms and play mario 64!

Instant messaging, Skype is available on all OS’s for voice calling. For instant messaging Adium for mac and GAIM freely available for all platforms supporting all commonly used protocols.

Finally for media VLC is the way to go, you can even do screenshots on it *temps people away from windows media player and the horrible DRMness of it*

So there you go, some creative googling and a cheap PC or perhaps you could get an OS free Dell and tada. Every thing is compatible with other OS’s just be sure to save documents as the correct file type.

I didn’t cover OS/2 in detail here (although most software listed supports it) nor freeBSD and I suppose in Mac’s respect I’ve covered UNIX but I’m mainly covering linux distros such as Ubuntu and other popular ones such as gentoo and debian.

distros such as the most recently

Oh and I’m feeling much better now :)