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I am not a computer expert, or professional computer user. I am just an ordinary person who has been messing about with computers since the early 1990’s. My first computer was a 8 Mhz Unisys 88286, with 640 Kb of ram, 20 Mb harddisk. It ran for 3 months then got wrecked by a virus and refused to function after that. I have experienced the joys and frustrations of using the following operative systems:- Dos, Windows 2.0, Windows 3.0, Windows 3.11, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows XP, Windows Vista (the worst Windows version I have ever used), and a trial version of Windows 7, which wouldn’t install :-(. My experiences are not confined to Windows, as I have also used Corel Linux, Mandrake Linux (now Mandriva), Damn Small Linux, Ubuntu Linux and Vixta Linux. So I have gained a fair bit of experience over the years.
What do I use my computer for ? Well I enjoy being creative, so I have spent many happy hours doing photo editing, Desktop Publishing, multimedia editing and creation, building this website in a WYSIWYG web editor, audio editing and conversion, video editing, trying out system utilities, trying out Freeware, Shareware and weird programs, browsing the web, creating 3D objects and text, and lastly playing games, YES.... I admit to wasting some of my time playing games:-)
I am also intrigued by programming, and have created a couple of small programs with Delphi, which is fun, but I must admit... I am a lazy “so and so”, having to sort out the code and write it down I find quite tedious and have never had the time to sit down and really get to learn it. The Scale-Q-lator program featured else where on this site, was built in a multimedia editor (Opus Creator) which does all the coding invisibly.
Through the pages of this section, I hope to take you through some of the software I have found very useful, brilliant, or indispensable. Also to look at some of the operative systems available and my experiences with them. Who knows I might be able to hand on some tips and tricks as well !
Hopefully I will be able to point you in the direction of some really useful Freeware and Shareware. I am a skinflint...and not a wealthy man..So why pay money unnecessarily? The majority of software I use is either FREEWARE or SHAREWARE. In a couple of cases I have bought what I would call relatively expensive software, as I have been unable to find alternatives that are as good or effective. By “expensive”, I mean anything that costs over $100. For me there is nothing more irritating than buying expensive software, only to learn 3 months or a year later that there is now a new and better version available that can do X amount of wonderful things that the version one has bought cannot do. Constantly paying for updates is a really pain, and something I tend not to do, keeping to the original version and not speculating about the X amount of wonderful things I cannot do with it !
I am paranoid about the security of my PC. If you are NOT and have an internet connection, then you should be, it is getting more and more dangerous out there. For those of you who want to keep your PC safe and secure without it costing money, in the near future, I hope to have have a page devoted to security, antivirus, software firewalls, antispyware/malware, and a few ways to help to keep you safer, for the most part, vwithout it costing anything, or being too nerdy.