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Computer Buzz Free Software Awards | View information about Computer Buzz Free Software Awards within our Technology Website Directory section by reviewing this area of our website. We provide a wealth of information online to help our visitors become better informed about Computer Buzz. |
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Computer Buzz Free Software Awards
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Computer Buzz has been researching the best of the freebie application programs for the past year or so, and we are pleased to announce our Free Software Awards.
To be eligible for FSA recognition, the software must belong to a mainstream program category (word processing, spreadsheet, etc.), it must be readily available to the general computer-using public (typically via Internet download), and it must be totally free of charge. Commercial programs, including shareware, don't qualify. Neither do operating systems, although most Linux and Unix OSs are free for the downloading; we considered application programs only.
We tested the most current stable version of each candidate. Alpha and beta releases were ignored. Where a package was available for more than one platform/OS and that is becoming increasingly common these days we tried to give more than one of them a look. (Incidentally, we awarded points to apps that were available for multi-platforms.) We did not evaluate any vertical market niche apps.
Take a look at our categories and winners herewith, and see what you think. Computer Buzz invites your comments about both. Have we left out some popular categories? Are some of our winners actually unworthy of the awards? We'd like to hear from y'all about this.
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Best Free Office Suite Award
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WINNER: OPENOFFICE.ORG
This one was a no-brainer; OpenOffice.org was a shoo-in. "OO.o," as it is often called, is a slick piece of software that just works. It's easy to find, acquire, and install, and it runs on virtually any architecture and any OS.
OpenOffice.org includes a word processor, a spreadsheet, a presentation module (equivalent to Power Point), and a drawing program, all of which are slick, stable, professional applications. Computer Buzz finds that OpenOffice.org is easy to learn, and if you have ever used another office software package (MS Office leaps to mind), you'll take to OpenOffice.org right away.
OpenOffice.org is based on StarOffice, an office suite originally developed in Germany and acquired by Sun Microsystems in August 1999. The source code of the suite was released in July 2000 with the intention of reducing the dominant market share of MS Office by providing a free, open, high-quality alternative.
Official Website: www.OpenOffice.org
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Best Free Stand-Alone Word Processor Award
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WINNER: ABIWORD
The fact that AbiWord doesn't have much competition in this category doesn't mean that it's not a quality product. Computer Buzz is well aware that AbiWord is part of Gnome Office, a collection of office applications with some vague degree of integration. But Gnome Office is so loosely integrated that its modules really and truly qualify as stand-alone apps.
The name AbiWord (rhymes with "hobby-word") is derived from the root of the Spanish word "abierto," meaning "open," as in open or free software. It is supported on Linux, Mac OS X (PowerPC), Microsoft Windows, ReactOS, BeOS, and other operating systems.
AbiWord's level of support and quality vary from OS to OS. Linux versions, for example, are actively developed and high quality, while recent Mac OS X versions don't run natively on the latest machines and don't render fonts correctly. Computer Buzz does not recommend AbiWord for the Mac at this time.
AbiWord has a similar user interface to Microsoft Word, intended to ease the learning curve for new users. It is a real, full-featured package that supports the following features:
* Fast startup and speed of operation
* Low memory and hard drive requirements
* Microsoft Word-like interface
* Support for tables, footnotes, and endnotes
* Support for tables of contents
* Equation editing
* Grammar checking
* User interface and spell checking in 49 languages.
Official Website: www.Abisource.com
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Best Free Stand-Alone Spreadsheet Award
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WINNER: GNUMERIC
Like its Gnome cousin AbiWord, Gnumeric has unfortunately little in the way of serious competition for the award of best in its category. And like AbiWord, Gnumeric also does double duty as a module of the weakly integrated Gnome desktop office suite, although it is generally regarded as a stand-alone application.
The program was created by Miguel de Icazais who intended it to be a free replacement for proprietary spreadsheet programs such as Microsoft Excel, which it broadly and openly emulates.
Gnumeric has the ability to import and export data in several file formats, including CSV, Microsoft Excel, HTML, LaTeX, Lotus 1-2-3, OpenDocument and Quattro Pro. Its native format is the Gnumeric file format, an XML file compressed with gzip. It includes all of the spreadsheet functions of the North American edition of Microsoft Excel and many functions unique to Gnumeric.
Gnumeric's accuracy has helped it establish a niche among users for statistical analysis and other scientific tasks. Gnumeric version 1.0 was released in December of 2001. The current release is version 1.7 is the first to have Microsoft Open Office XML support.
Office Open Official Website: www.Gnome.org/projects/Gnumeric
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Best Free Stand-Alone Web Browser Award
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WINNER: MOZILLA FIREFOX
Most web browsers tend to be free software, so Firefox actually has quite a bit of healthy competition. Nonetheless, it's the hands-down winner in this category.
Mozilla Firefox is a graphical web browser developed by the Mozilla Corporation, and a large community of external contributors. Firefox started as a fork of the Navigator browser component of the Mozilla Application Suite, and it has now superceded the Mozilla Suite as the flagship product of the Mozilla Project, under the direction of the Mozilla Foundation.
Firefox is a cross-platform browser, providing support for various versions of Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Moreover, the source code has been unofficially ported to other operating systems, including FreeBSD, OS/2, Solaris, RISC OS, SkyOS, BeOS, and more recently, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition.
According to Market Share by Net Applications, 14.55% of the world's Web browsers used Firefox in June 2007, with 13.92% using version 1.5 or higher.
Official Website: www.Mozilla.com
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Best Free Stand-Alone Email Client Award
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WINNER: MOZILLA THUNDERBIRD
Mozilla Thunderbird is a free, cross-platform e-mail client developed by the Mozilla Foundation. The project strategy is modeled after Firefox, Mozilla's award-winning web browser. It can also be used as a news gathering app, but for the purposes of the Computer Buzz awards, we consider it to be a stand-alone email client.
Thunderbird is a refinement of the mail and news interface. When version 1.0 was released in late 1994, it was downloaded over 500,000 times in the first three days (and 1,000,000 times in 10 days). As of 2007, Thunderbird has been downloaded more than 50 million times since. It's hard to argue with that kind of success.
Like everything else that Mozilla does, this app "just works." It is as full-featured as any email client on the market and significantly better than most. We would probably prefer Thunderbird even if it were not completely free.
Official Website: www.Mozilla.com
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Best Free Integrated Browser/Email Client Award
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WINNER: OPERA
If Mozilla can win awards for the best stand-alone freeware browser and email clients, you might be tempted to think that their integrated browser/email combo app, called Seamonkey, would just automatically be the winner in that category. Seamonkey certainly gets a very strong honorable mention, but it's outclassed by Opera.
Opera is a primarily a cross-platform web browser and email client which also handles common Internet-related tasks including managing contacts, chatting online, viewing Widgets, downloading BitTorrents, and reading Newsfeeds. Opera's lightweight mobile web browser, Opera Mini, and most current versions of its desktop application are offered free of charge.
This package is a snap to download, install, and configure. It is as intuitive as it is full-featured.
Opera is proprietary software developed by Opera Software based in Oslo, Norway. It runs on a variety of operating systems including multiple versions of Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris. It is also used in mobile phones, smartphones, PDAs, game consoles, and interactive televisions.
Official Website: www.Opera.com
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Best Free Image Manipulation Program Award
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WINNER: (THE) GIMP
Gimp, often referred to as "The" Gimp, is an acronym for the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition, and image authoring. Gimp is used to process digital graphics and photographs. Typical uses include creating graphics and logos, resizing and cropping photos, altering colors, combining multiple images, removing unwanted image features, and converting between different image formats. Gimp can also be used to create basic animated images in GIF format.
Gimp is often used as a free software replacement for Adobe Photoshop, although its menu and command structure is only vaguely similar. To that end, an alternative version of Gimp called "GimpShop" has been created to more closely mimic the look and feel of Photoshop. Computer Buzz has tested both and does not distinguish between the two.
This app runs on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and Unix, and has support for multiple languages.
Gimp is a marvelous piece of software that rivals Photoshop in features. It did not have a significant challenger for this award.
Official Website: www.Gimp.org
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Best Free Vector Graphics Drawing Award
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WINNER: INKSCAPE
Inkscape is a vector graphics editor application. It is primarily developed for Linux, but it is cross-platform and runs on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X (under X11), and other Unix-like operating systems. Inkscape is under active development, with new features being added regularly. Inkscape's implementation of SVG and CSS standards is incomplete; most notably, it does not yet support SVG filter effects (with some exceptions), animation, and SVG fonts.
Inkscape has good multi-lingual support particularly for complex scripts, something currently lacking in most commercial vector graphics applications.
One of Inkscape's strong points is interface consistency and usability, including efforts to follow the GNOME Human interface guidelines compliance, universal keyboard accessibility, and convenient on-canvas editing.The most common operations (such as transformations, zooming, z-order) have convenient one-key shortcuts.
Inkscape provides floating tooltips and status bar hints for all buttons, controls, commands, keys, and on-canvas handles. It comes with a complete keyboard and mouse reference and several interactive tutorials in SVG.
Official Website: www.Inkscape.org
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