Software Worth Paying For

I'm a huge proponent of open source software, and I feel that there are very few applications out there that should actually be paid for. However, I there are a couple of applications that are worth it. I thought I'd put together a little list:

VMWare

VMWare allows you to run a different operating system in a "Virtual Machine" This program is amazing, and is quite fast. Too bad that they don't have a Mac version.

Other programs, such as Microsoft Virtual PC, and even open source ones like qemu just can't compare in terms of features and performance.

Microsoft Money

The only Microsoft program that I actually enjoy using. :) This program interacts better with my bank than others such as Quicken. I also haven't been able to find a very good open source alternative to it as well. GnuCash seems to show some promise, but it seems to be a little slow getting there.

I get this for free, usually, with my tax program - TaxCut - so I don't really know which one to list as "worth paying for". I'm not a huge fan of TaxCut - but I like the fact that it comes with a rebate for Microsoft Money.

BlogWorkz

I mentioned it before, and BlogWorkz is a pretty nice Mac OS blogging client. I wouldn't probably pay much more than the $10 that it costs - but it's worth it.

NeoOffice

OK - so I know that NeoOffice is open source - it's just a port to Mac OS of OpenOffice.org, but in order to help development, they offer an "Early Access" program. It's worth the cost - the Alpha and Beta binaries that they release are quite high quality already. (This is coming from someone who loves bleeding-edge stuff)

Crossover Office

Crossover Office is a commercial version of Wine. Although Wine is an open source application, and it's very good, Crossover Office adds quite a few benefits. It is much easier to install, and they have scripts to help install most common Windows applications (such as Internet Explorer or Media Player).

In theory, anything you can do with Crossover Office, you can do with Wine - but I have found that it's much easier to just not have to deal with the hoops you have to jump through to get it working in Wine.

Windows XP

OK - so it's not technically "worth" paying for, but let's face it - we live in a Microsoft-dominated society still. This is getting better, but for the most part, you still need something to run those Windows applications. Anything older than Windows XP is horribly slow and unusable (from a "usability" sense). Windows XP is much better. From what I've seen installing the Windows Vista betas, it appears that Vista is way too over-the-top.

You need to have a copy around - at least to run in your Virtual Machine (VMWare, if you can.)

Mac OS X

By far, this is the only Operating System worth paying for. It is easy to use, and I really like its performance. One benefit that it has is that you can do almost anything on OS X that you can do in Linux or other free operating systems.

Probably the biggest benefit of Mac OS X is similar to the benefit provided by Crossover Office. You get the performance and stability of a solid Unix-based operating system - which you can tweak and configure to your heart's content - without the added cost of messing around with trying to get it set up. I've switched.

Stay tuned for a list of software that is definitely *NOT* worth paying for. :)

So much to do...

In my last post, I talked about some things that I'd want to do if I had the time - I thought I'd detail a bit more all of the things I'd like to do if I only had the time:

• Create my own desktop blogging client, like BlogWorkz
• Port K9 Web Protection to Mac OS
• Do CougarFan.com work
• Make Toonetown.com more "pretty"
• Convert OpenOffice help files into Apple Help files for NeoOffice
• Translate pages from the NeoWiki into Spanish
• Reconfigure my mail servers at home so that not just one machine does all the work
• Create native mac (non-X11) versions of The Gimp, Inkscape, Ethereal, and Dia

Wow! I'm probably a little too ambitious... :)

BlogWorkz

OK - so I guess that I'll plug a cool little program for Mac that I've been using to set this up. It's called BlogWorkz and it's written by someone named Andre Garzia.

At first glance, it seemed a little rough around the edges, but after using it a bit, I found it to be very simple and intuitive. There are a couple of bugs with the program, but all-in-all, it was a pretty good one, and - to me, at least - seemed deserving of the $10 registration fee.

There are quite a few features that I feel it is missing - most of them are UI and usability features, so who knows how long I'll keep using it. Maybe when I'm feeling ambitious (which never seems to happen), I'll take a stab at writing my own client for Mac. I did it for my linux machine before, I'm pretty sure I could handle it. :)

Rain!

Trying to do yardwork today - but it's raining. :(

Oh well - nothing I can do about it, I guess.

I guess we'll try this one out

OK - so my last attempts at blogging didn't really work out - so I'm going to try it out on a "real" blogging site.

We'll have to see how this all works out. I might actually do better at this now.