DURING the Movement Control Order (MCO), many people relied on their home computer to get work done.
Imagine how troublesome it'd be if your home computer crashes. Well, it happened to me recently with my desktop computer.
I also have a laptop computer which I could use to do work but the screen size is small. It's okay for typing articles but not so great when it comes to editing pictures or videos.
So, to be fully productive, I needed to get my desktop computer working again.
A hardware diagnostic found that there was nothing wrong with the computer itself. The operating system somehow got corrupted.
After trying to reset the computer while keeping the programmes intact didn't work, I had no choice but to do a complete reformat of my hard drive. That means all the programmes would be wiped out.
Fortunately, I still had all the installation files for most of the software that I used on my computer but for a few of them I didn't have the installation files anymore. So, I had to either repurchase them again or look for free alternatives.
I soon discovered that it's actually possible to fully set up your desktop computer with just free software if you wanted to. Here are some of the best free software you can install to improve your productivity.
BROWSER
You'll need a browser to surf the world wide web. My favourite is Mozilla Firefox. It has a lot of functionalities, is customisable and has good security features.
Google Chrome is a good secondary browser, which I use whenever I find some websites don't work so well with Firefox.
Such sites usually work fine on Chrome. If privacy is a major concern for you, Firefox is probably better than Chrome, which tracks everything you do.
But even better than Firefox, for privacy, is the lesser-known Tor Browser. You'll really be anonymous. No one will know which sites you visit.
PRODUCTIVITY SUITE
Microsoft Office is the universal standard but if you don't want to pay for a monthly subscription or for a perpetual licence, there's a very good online alternative called Google Drive which is free.
Drive offers Docs, Sheets and Slides (the equivalent of MS Office's Word, Excel and PowerPoint). And it offers cloud storage up to 15Gb for free (if you need more storage, you can pay for it at a reasonable fee).
ONLINE ARTICLE CLIPPING
If you're a news and information junkie like me, you probably would like to be able to easily clip articles from the web.
I use Evernote for that. I pay for the premium version because I want to use more of its functionalities but the free version works fine for basic note-keeping.
If you use an Evernote add-on (available for Firefox as well as Chrome), it makes it super easy to clip notes from any web page you want. You can save the entire article as is or you can save a simplified format, which is a stripped down version of the article without the ads and other graphics.
PDF READER
At one time or another, you're likely to have to read a PDF file. It's that common. There are many PDF readers out there now but why not go with the original, which is the one by Adobe, the company that created the PDF format.
Its reader is called Adobe Acrobat Reader and it's available for free. The pro version has more functionalities but the free version is good enough if all you want to do is read PDFs.
IMAGE EDITING
For editing images, I like to use Adobe Photoshop but a free, open-source programme called GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) works well too.
If you need to retouch photographs, there are quite a lot of tools that GIMP has for you to do a professional job of it. GIMP can also be used for producing icons, graphical design elements and art.
DESKTOP PUBLISHING
Whenever I want to create an e-book, I use an online service called Blurb which charges a fee for converting your work into ePub and Mobi format (these two are the leading e-book formats).
Some people like to use Adobe InDesign for this purpose but I find it too complicated to use. If you want to do it for free, try Scribus, which has all the basic tools you'd need to create your e-book.
AUDIO EDITING
As I like to do podcasts, audio editing is important for me. Sometimes I edit audio for use in videos too. For that, I use Sound Forge (previously owned by Sony but is now under Magix).
Audacity is a free audio editor that can get the job done as well. The first time I played with it, many years ago, it was still quite primitive. But over the years, its features and functionalities have increased considerably and you can now do high-level productions with it.
VIDEO EDITING
Videos make for very effective posts on social media, so I create a lot of videos to promote my judo club.
For that, I use an application called CyberLink PowerDirector, which like many paid software these days, is available as a monthly subscription service.
Lightworks is an alternative you can use which has a free version. Many of the tools you get in the free version are the same as for the paid version but the free one limits your video output to 720p. That's frankly good enough for social media and for YouTube videos.
FILE BACK-UP & SHARING
There are a lot of free options for this nowadays. Two notable ones are Google Drive, which I mentioned earlier, and Microsoft OneDrive. However, the granddaddy of them all is Dropbox, which is really the one that kind of started it all for file back-up and sharing.
The basic free version offers only 2Gb of free storage but that's probably enough if you use it to temporarily back-up some files that you wish to share with colleagues or friends.
It's super easy to use, which was why it became so popular. Just drop a file into a folder and it gets backed-up. If you want to share a folder or a file with someone, just right click on the folder or file concerned and send them the link to it. That's it.
TEXT MESSAGING
Some people like WeChat, some like Line, some like Telegram. But almost everybody has WhatsApp on their phone.
If you text a lot or want to have extended text exchanges, you'd want to type these texts on your desktop or laptop keyboard. WhatsApp Web is what you need.
You just need to scan a QR code and you'll be able to do your texting via your home computer.
VIDEO CONFERENCING
The original popular video conferencing application is Skype, which is what I still use when I want to make overseas video calls with friends. But for business purposes, it's been supplanted by Zoom, which has really taken off during this Covid-19 crisis.
You can host an online conference for up to 100 people and the free version lets you run a conference call for up to 40 minutes, from any device. Usually people do it on a desktop or laptop but a phone will do too.
Oon Yeoh is a consultant with experiences in print, online and mobile media. Reach him at oonyeoh@gmail.com.