How to beat the economy with free software Part I

The word processor/Office productivity suite war for dominance and control of the marketplace has been over for a long time with Microsoft Office the clear winner. Although I know a lot of people slam Microsoft, I think they've done a relatively good job producing software over the years. Most of their products are highly compatible across a range of hardware and software.

Unfortunately, Microsoft products are not cheap.

The dominance of Microsoft Office coupled with its hefty price tag presents a problem for many people. While Microsoft provides special pricin for OEM and students, it still boast a pretty stiff sticker price. Microsoft is in business to make money after all and I understand this fact. Still, for people with limited income shelling out a few hundred bucks for Microsoft Office can put a serious crimp in the household budget.

To make matters worse; many people who own a legitimate copy lose track of the installation disk or serial number. Invariably, something happens, whether it's a virus or system crash, that requires a reinstallation of the operating system. Reinstalling the operating system means that (in many cases) everything that was on the computer before will be completely erased.

Often, these computers end up in my shop where I have the unhappy task of informing my client that I can reinstall their operating system, but their Office Suite is a goner in less they can come up with the disks and serial number. More often than not, the same " deer in the headlights" expression crosses their face and they either have no idea what I'm talking about or they have no idea where the serial number is.

The client then has little choice but to purchase the software again. Since just about everybody needs to use a word processor and that word processor must create documents that other people can open they're really up a tree.

Here is where a great open source product if it east wheat known as Open Office enters the picture. It is completely free, supports all of the Microsoft Office formats, is easy to use and readily available to download from the Internet. It was created by an online community of software developers and is well documented and supported.

While I prefer Microsoft Office, Open Office a good substitute in a pinch. It offers the same basic functionality and can really save your bacon if you're working with a tight budget. You can download it here and read more about it.

I hope you give it a try and that it works out for you. If you do leave a comment so I know that you're out there. For every five comments that I get I will try to post an article with more free software.

A good point…

As many of you know, I have begun to write a series of articles regarding how you can make a little extra money for online and beat the economy. You can see the first article in this series here:

http://everlovetech.blogspot.com/2009/03/how-to-make-few-extra-bucks-on-line-in.html

A reader of my blog on another web site where and syndicating this blog left a comment. The comment was made on activerain.com, a popular real estate web site aimed at real estate professionals. This particular reader was a real estate agent and made the comment " why would I want to advertise for the realtor down the street?".

His concern make a lot of sense, so I thought that I would clarify my thoughts on the matter now. If your website or blog is promoting a product or service it may not make a lot of sense to advertise a competing product or service. Although, I have noticed advertisements for satellite TV on cable and vice versa. I think enough your visitor is not impressed enough with your website, services and other offerings to do business with you you might as well make a couple of dollars on their way out.

If you are offering our clients and customers a square deal, most of them will recognize that and wild horses couldn't drag them away. Such is the lure and power of a bargain. By offering good value and backing it up with excellent service has been a formula for success for centuries.

However if your visitor isn't interested it is a show of good faith and professional courtesy to direct that visitor to a website that may be more useful to them. It is a fringe benefit that you can get paid for doing so. Face it, if your visitor is going to click on an ad you have basically already lost them anyway.

Even in the case of stiff competition; isn't it nice to know that you have lightened a competitors pockets by a few dollars when a visitor (who was probably on their way out anyway) clicks on that competitors ad. Whether your competitor makes a sale or not doesn't matter.

All of this is of course assuming that you're going to advertise on your main blog or website. When I started writing this series I was thinking more along the lines of starting blogs or websites about things that are an interest to you rather than a vocation. If you blog about a hobby or something else you are passionate about your likely to have a lot of material and knowledge that other people will find useful and interesting.

If you are Blogging about something other than your profession, it doesn't really matter what ads are served. For instance, if your account and as a profession, but you love to fly small airplanes you can blog about that. Whatever ads are displayed on your blog will most likely be about flying. Therefore there is no worry about sending traffic to your competition, or losing traffic in general. In all cases, the traditional way that people do business, is and forever will be, changed. The people that will do well usually are the ones that can adapt to whatever changes present themselves.

Keep an eye out for my tutorial on using google AdSense for profit.

This series is being brought to you courtesy of http://RealEstateTechOnline.Com