Hi all,
Now, there's a lot going on in the tech industry
beside A.I. Microsoft's Windows 11 is scaring off the French Government, and (quite ironically) even the
Chinese Government, because of concerns regarding data harvesting and lack of privacy. Even HP and other laptop manufacturers are switching the default operating system (OS) away from Windows to other operating systems. Not necessarily for privacy concerns, but because of the low margins on cheaper laptops and a surprisingly high return rate by people not enthralled with Microsoft's ongoing subscription model. Even Adobe is coming under fire for the cost of subscriptions, it's use of people's personal photos/works to train their A.I. without permission, and several other justifiable concerns with their industry-standard software.
Also, Microsoft's
forced "TPM chip requirement" for Windows 11 late last year meant potentially
millions of computers that were otherwise perfectly fine for the task, either ended up as e-waste or encouraged hacks to get around the issue. I hacked my old desktop PC with more than enough performance for Windows 11.. and it worked, but monitoring the network traffic on my home router told me a lot of data was going to Microsoft. So I keep it around as a backup PC system, but I have a second OS on that machine which runs my day-to-day tasks.
So what can we do as users of computers, to keep functional computers in a usable state, and saving money at the same time?
Use free software!
I used to work as an IT guy in a local university, and the one thing I can tell you, is that universities are very budget conscious when it comes to their tech. Students on a budget using older computers, academics that are waiting for the grant money to come in, even bespoke projects in remote, limited electrical power situations... that would
never work reliably enough using commercial software were great cases for trying the free stuff.
So if you want to see how far you can go with free software, I have a page listing my favourite free apps, what they're used for (or their commercial equivalents), I've used many of these applications for
decades in both my workplaces and at home, and many have come a long way in the last couple of years. Most of these apps run on Windows, Mac OS and Linux, and a few run on Apple/Android mobile devices as well. So without further ado:
https://waywardham.net/index.php/tech/i-t-and-computing/120-free-software-for-almost-every-occasion
All of my links are to the official app web sites, so you get them straight from the source. I just make free recommendations on my site because I get hounded at social events otherwise, and this way I can say "go there and see what you like, there's no subscriptions or licensing costs to worry about, so why not, right?".
I hope it helps!
Hamish
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