Ten Free Software Programs You Need To Download Before Beginning An Online Class
November 8, 2010 by michaelm
Filed under Online Education
Going to school has been made a bit easier! The open source community has developed free software programs that can be downloaded before beginning an online class. These make can make life much easier.
1.) Open Office. This suite of office utilities is just as good as its counterpart from Microsoft. A full featured text editor comes with a spell checker and the ability to make Web pages. It also comes with a spreadsheet program and can convert Adobe acrobat to flash.
2) Inkscape. This feature rich vector-art graphics program competes with its counterpart from Adobe. It makes high-quality images that can be used in a wide range of applications. Because vector-art is a mathematical representation of the image, it can be scaled to incredible sizes. This is definitely one of the best free software programs around.
3) gIMP. For photo retouching and manipulation there is none better than the GIMP. It also has a feature to “Photoshop” an image. This software is massively supported by the open source community and many of the Adobe plug ins work with the gIMP.
4) Free OCR. From time to time, a student may run into a situation where they need to convert the text in an image into something that can be used with a text editor. This free software is actually used by Google because it is so good.
5) 7Zip. Because it is much easier to send and receive files when they are compressed, every student should have a compression-decompression utility. This one is adaptable and can handle compress files from a variety of platforms. For instance, if a TAR file was made on Linux it can be opened up on in Windows machine using 7ZIP.
6) Client for Google Translate. During your exciting career as a student will be occasions where information will need to be translated. This is just the free application needed to do that.
7) Smart Scientific Calculator. Even art students will appreciate this free, full featured calculator.
Read Plus. Why bother to read your homework when you can have your computer read it to you! This free software uses a natural voice to read text.
9) Notalon. Taking notes just got easier. When you are done, export as a PDF and print.
10) Student Dog Organizer. Made by students for students this free software will become an essential part of your life.
