Never look a gift horse in the mouth!

I try not to provide free advertising for software companies but in this case I make an exception. Many unemployed people, myself among them, are watching every penny and cutting corners where we can. If we can avoid shelling out hundreds of dollars for software by downloading high quality freeware then I am all for it.

There is a lot of free software available these days but picking the good from the bad can often be a chore. There is the ever present worry of downloading something that contains a virus or is incompatible with our computers. The products that I mention in this blog are some that I have worked with extensively and which should work with most PCs.

1. King Kong - This nifty little tool is small but powerful. King Kong allows you to copy part or all of anything displayed on your screen to the clipboard for pasting into your documents. You can copy a photo from a web page, text from your favorite blog or take a snapshot of every open document displayed on your screen(s). Yes, King Kong copes well with dual monitors. If you have used SnagIt then King Kong will not be new to you. You can find King Kong at www.kingkongcapture.com
2. OpenOffice - This package from Sun Microsystems contains all of the tools of MS Office. There is a wordprocessor, spreadsheet, database, drawing tool, presentation tool and a math tool. These tools are very similar in layout to their MS Office equivalents and best of all they can open and save your files in Microsoft formats (.doc, .xls etc). Also, you can create PDF files at the click of a button. Open Office is not small so be sure to read the computer requirements carefully before downloading the software. You can download Open Office at www.openoffice.org
3. Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2009 - For those of you looking for a free alternative to Quickbooks, this is it. The look and feel is very similar. You can download the software from http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/accountingexpress/FX101729681033.aspx
4. Free Mind - When you are trying to break a task down into smaller components do you doodle? Do you like to flowchart task components? If so, this might be the tool for you. Free Mind creates Mind Maps which are often used in business to document processes. Free Mind can be downloaded from http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
5. Google SketchUp - This is a 3D modelling program. You can draw just about anything. Users can access the Google 3D Warehouse for many components and models created by other users and upload their own designs. Sketchup can be downloaded from http://sketchup.google.com/
   

Quick Tip # 2 - Organizing your Start Menu in Windows XP

When you display the All Programs menu do you get a hodgepodge of program names rambling over two or more columns? Does it take you more than a couple of seconds to find the program that you are looking for amid a morass of text?

Sound familiar? Well here is a quick and easy way to reduce your menu to one short, easily navigable column.

Take a look at the current menu and quickly jot down a list of categories that your programs fit into, e.g. Games, Financial Tools, Photo Editors, Office Tools, etc. You will add these categories to your menu in the form of folders. Once the folders have been added you can simply drag and drop each program into it's appropriate folder.

Adding new folders cannot be done from the All Programs menu. For this we have to navigate the C drive. The following steps will walk you through the process.

1. Right click on the Start button and then select the Explore option.
2. Navigate to the folder C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs
   
3. Click on the File option on the toolbar at the top of the page to display the file menu.
   
4. Click on the New option then click on the Folder option when the sub-menu displays. The menus will close and a new folder icon named New Folder will appear in the Programs folder.
5. Right click on the New Folder icon and select the Rename option from the folder menu.
   
6. Type over the current folder name and replace it with one of your program categories, e.g. Office Tools.

Now that you have added your folder you can click on the Start button and then All Programs. When your program menu displays you can simply click once on each program name and then move it over the appropriate folder. The program will be added to the new folder and will disappear from the current menu.