Here in The Philippines, software piracy is very rampant. Microsoft XP, Microsoft Office, Visual Studio, Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Studio, name it, almost every IT enthusiast have cracked or illegal software.You can’t blame them though, commercial programs are just too expensive when purchased here in this country compared to the US or other parts of the world. And most people, being trained with commercial software in college, find it too hard to switch or even find alternatives (free software). And some, use illegal software because everybody’s doing it. It’s almost second nature for everyone.
I did quite a lot of research for alternatives to these commonly used commercial softwares. And most, I spent a lot of time to learn and use. To start with, I’m using Microsoft XP as operating system. I have a legal copy, and I’m not giving it to you ^_^x Maybe some of you would scream “Why aren’t you using Linux?? It’s free!”. Yeah, but I haven’t gotten around to learning Linux yet. I found the learning curve to be really steep for me.
Here are some of the alternatives that I’m currently using:
OpenOffice > Microsoft Office
Almost the same as Microsoft Office. I love the quick conversion from Word format to PDF (found in the Save As… dialog)
The GIMP > Adobe Photoshop
Not as powerful as Photoshop in terms of user interface, but is already good enough when it comes to image manipulation. And for me it’s already perfect for web design purposes.
SharpDevelop > Visual Studio
Not as powerful as Visual Studio, but still powerful in it’s own way. And it is steadily growing.
Subversion > Visual Sourcesafe
This is way better than Visual Sourcesafe. And way cooler too. You will also need to install TortoiseSVN for a very neat and great integration into the Windows Explorer.
7-Zip > WinZip and WinRar
Works the same as WinZip and WinRar. Supports many formats. Simple, which is really just what I wanted.
Dia > Microsoft Visio
I’m not currently satisfied with this yet, but at least it gets the job done. Simple and valuable. I only use it for class diagrams though.