Free Alternatives to Adobe Products

If you don't follow Lifehacker, you're really missing out. One of their recent articles dealt with free and cheap alternatives to Adobe's creativity products. Where I work, I'm lucky enough to have access to Adobe Acrobat Pro, and I have a copy of Elements 10 for personal use. However, I haven't had access to Photoshop in years. I've never had the chance to play with InDesign and some of the others.

As attorneys, especially those with tight IT budgets, we can't always afford the cutting edge toys. It's important to give the open source stuff a try. In fact, you just might like it.

From that list, I've used GIMP as the Photoshop alternative for a long time now. There is no question that it takes a little getting used to, but for a free tool, it is fantastic. Moreover, there is plenty of help available on the internet.

The other tool on the list I use regularly is Inkscape. I love Inkscape. I used it in designing the graphics for my most recent Android game. I've used it for graphics on flyers and promotional materials. It is simply an awesome vector graphics engine. It also has lots of documentation and tutorials available on the web. I also found it to be more intuitive than GIMP was when I first started to use it.

I would definitely recommend reading the Lifehacker article and checking out some of these tools before shelling out the cash for Adobe.

THE LOW-COST OFFICE - THE COMPUTER

I work in a rural legal services program. If we are unable to get software donated or a substantial discount, we often look to open source solutions. For a nerd like me, this is wonderful. However, if you were to start your own small office and had a limited technology budget, could you function primarily on open source and outdated technology? Could you spend a minimal amount of money to put together the hardware and software sufficient to run a solo law office?

To start this mostly thought experiment, I thought I'd choose the hardware. For this, I went with a Dell Insprion 600m. It is 10 years old, has 40 GB of memory, and 512 MB of RAM. It came preloaded with Windows XP and a wireless card. To say the least, it's specs show its age. And with XP's death a few weeks behind us, it's not something you would want to be using at first blush for, well, anything other than a paper weight or recycling.

I chose this laptop simply because I had it lying around from when my wife was in college. You can find one of these around for under $100.00 easily.

Of course, you can't leave it running Windows XP, but it definitely can't handle Windows 7 or 8. So, I went with Linux Mint, Version 13 code named Maya. Specifically, I chose the version with the Mate desktop.

Maya Mint is a FREE operating system. With the Mate desktop, it has some elements that will feel familiar to Windows XP and Windows 7 users. It is infinitely customizable, and a there is a lot of free, open source programs available for download. This includes web browsers, office suites, email clients, and others.

I've been using this particular setup for android app development for several months and for some light word processing without any problem. It boots quickly, I can access the internet, can receive Word files, and can open Adobe documents.

Linux might not be for everyone, but if you're looking to start a solo career and don't have much to invest in technology, a cheap, old laptop can be found and a safe, free operating system can run it. In the future, we will talk about the open source software available to run your low cost office.

NEED AN AUDIO EDITOR? GET AUDACITY

An audio editor might seem like one of those pieces of software that would be nice to have, but the costs would likely be too high to justify. After all, you might only want to edit an audio file once in a while. In my professional life, I only use it occasionally to clean up parts of voice messages from clients and to organize the audio recordings I have made at state hearings.

Thus, paying for audio recording software, in my professional life at least, would be a waste of money. That is why Audacity is such a great program. Audacity is an open-source program available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS.

It allows for layering of various sound files. You can import from and export to a few different formats, including .mp3. Additionally, it provides a number of different preprogrammed effects. The one I found the most useful is the ability to eliminate background noise. I have used it a number of times in connection with the Android App I'm currently working on and found it did a good job. It would be incredibly useful for eliminating a hum or other audio artifact in a voice mail.

The user interface seems a little cluttered to me, though this is by no means a deal breaker. Additionally, in some of the effects, the options that you can set can be a little overwhelming.

Overall, if you need an audio editor, Audacity is where I would start.