Chad Stiemke's Tech Journal

(Fairly) Great Office Alternatives

2007-10-15T10:34:00.001-05:00

Sorry for the delay in posting more information sooner - time has not been on my side. That being said, one thing I did notice in the time since my last post is how much time I spend in front of Microsoft Office at work. At home, I have been struggling to find a reasonable alternative given our home budget. After using some different systems throughout my computing history, I have some recommendations that you may also find useful:

Google Docs - FREE
(http://docs.google.com/)
Google Docs is slowly becoming a force to reckon with on the side of daily, average users. If all you need is a Word Processor, Spreadsheet and now a Presentation tool to create standard, fairly simple document, Docs is the way to go. You get online storage (with Google Account), document sharing, calendering, email (via GMail) as well as the other services (chat, photos, etc) Docs with the other Google apps makes this a nice average user office alternative. That being said, if you rely on Mail Merge, creating labels, pivot tables, slides with embedded content not web based or other advanced features, Google Apps and Docs does not have those features nor is this something that will probably be added as they are not going to replace a full blown office package. Home users, students or people that just need basic functionality should look at this an option that do not mind having their office apps hosted on a website.

OpenOffice - FREE
(http://www.openoffice.org/)
Take an office package, remove some of the bulk, remove the popular name tied to it, add features users ask for and you get OpenOffice. OpenOffice is quite an exiting alternative to your standard boxed office. An open source software that gives users basic and also advanced features at little-to-no cost (depending on how you use it) is an option that needs to be explored. You get the standard offline office suite with word processing, spread sheet, database, presentation offering that embraces new and upcoming file formats as well as standards created by other companies (read Microsoft Office files) . No email client or calendering offerings are available for this option and depending on how you use office or what you are looking for, this may or may not be something you need to consider; worth a look for many people.

Microsoft Office Home and Student Edition - $120-$149 (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/suites/FX101674081033.aspx)
Those that need the true Microsoft office at home or for classes, Microsoft Office Home and Student Edition is probably what you are looking for. You get the basics (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) and an extra (OneNote). I am not going to go thru the obvious Office applications but I do want to mention OneNote, after using it either you will love it or hate it. I tried it in Beta and it did not do a thing for me. After understand that it is not a Word replacement, it is a one-source data repository that is searchable, sendable and just a nice reference tool to use. I use it and like it alot now. Picture this, you have a semester worth of notes in Biology or a years worth of notes kept for a project at work and now you need to look for a reference of a single word or phrase, normally you need to need to thumb through all those pages and books looking for something that may or may not have been highlighted - nightmare! With OneNote once it is text or a note that you typed it searches through all your notes and find every time that word or phrase is used - boom and you are there. You can include pictures or virtually anything that is electronic (pictures, documents) with the exception of PDF (my one major issue with it). The other nice thing is, want to share the info, if the person has OneNote, send it to them and they have it as you have it; if they don't have OneNote then they get a picture of the page(s) so they can see all the information but obviously not able to edit it as is.

There are other alternatives out there but I have not used them so I cannot personally. If you are looking for other options, make sure to also check out:

Star Office
Lotus Symphony

Virus, Spyware and Malware Removal

2007-04-02T15:14:00.000-05:00

I have seen more than a few slow functioning PCs that have had issues or been virtually disabled thanks to Spyware/Malware installed on the PC. This is becoming an increasing threat and nuisance to PCs - more so than viruses in my opinion. Below are some tools I commonly use to help remove infected PCs - in no particular order:

* Spyware/Malware Removal Tools

Adaware (www.lavasoft.com)

Great piece of software for removing ads and other annoying pop-ups that may occur throughout your system.
Make sure you update the software before you run a scan (the more complete the software the better results you will get).
WARNING: If you have ad supported software and run this software, it may detect that ad feature and cause problems when you try to run the software. Worse case scenario, you will need to reinstall the software.

Spybot Search and Destroy (www.safer-networking.org/en/)

Excellent piece of software for removing numerous pieces of spyware that may be installed on your computer.
Has a feature called Immunize to block certain 'holes' within your system to prevent faster infestation.
Make sure software has newest software definitions installed to capture and remove the newest found issues.

*Virus Removal Tools

Avast (www.avast.com)

Excellent free antivirus program - highly recommended.
Integration with most email programs and P2P software.
Frequent updates, fast and not very system demanding.

AVG (free.grisoft.com)

Well known free antivirus.
Works well - though not as good (in my opinion) as Avast.

Panda's Activescan (www.pandasoftware.com/activescan)

Online scanner for antivirus (spyware is detected but only removed if you pay for the professional edition via yearly fee).
Automatically updated since it is online and Panda updates the virus definitions as available.
NOTE: Last time I ran it - it only works with Internet Explorer as it uses ActiveX controls to scan your system.

*Hybrids (removes both Spyware/Malware and Viruses)

TrendMicro's HouseCall (housecall.trendmicro.com)

Great online scanner.
Always updated - removes spyware and viruses in one scanning.
Works with IE (ActiveX) and Firefox (Java).
Slow but thorough!

My First Post

2007-03-14T16:40:00.000-05:00

This is my first attempt at a blog. Please bare with me while I work this out. What I plan on doing with this is to make this into my tech blog with little technology/Windows tips-n-tricks. I hope to post regularly, so please stay tuned.

:-)