Best Free Vista Applications

[felix8406]

Just though I'll start a list of free applications that work with Vista. Would like to hear from others. I like to concentrate on those applications that can easily replace other more expensive or extensive applications, e.g. Firefox replacing IE7. I would prefer that users test the software first, as third party reviews are sometimes misleading.

One of my favorite is AbiWord, http://www.abisource.com/
Can open/edit files with .doc and .rtf extensions, and others
Dictionary: Various, including US-English, UK-English, Spanish
Download file: 5MB
Latest Windows version: 2.4.6
Space require: 20MB of space
Time to Install: less than a minute

Pro: Easy to use and setup; it's just that simple. Can work well with Vista or XP. Can work with tables, including creating and editing tables. If you are familiar with WordPad, then you shouldn't have any problems using AbiWord; except AbiWord offers much more options.

Cons: No Thesaurus capabilities and does not check grammar, e.g. duplicate words.

[CrowdAds]

[felix8406]

To read PDF files, I couldn't find anything better than Foxit Reader: http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php. It's a small download, about 2MB, as opposed to 20MB for Acrobat Reader. The free version has limited tools, but it is fine to open, read, save, print or email PDF documents.

[Sylar]

Nice find mate. And only 2mb dats sweet!

[Vistanoob]

I've had my PC for less than a month, and I already have Abiword. I've done some test documents and inserted graphics, and so far I'm happy with it. A good alternative to Word with some of the bells and whistles of Word.(Works 6) I'm going to check out Foxit Reader too. Thanks for the tips.

[felix8406]

Want to create or open Word or Excel documents, but don't have MS Office installed? Then you can try FlySuite: http://www.flysuite.com/en/new.php?ww=us. You can open the application straight from the Internet, create and save the document in your computer. You can also open and edit Word and Excel document or use collaboration to share files with others.

[ProCookie]

Windows Live Wirter

Writer is a desktop application that makes it easy to publish rich content to your blog.

WYSIWYG editing
Writer knows your blog's visual theme. So you can see exactly what your posts will look like as you write them, before you publish. No more wasting time previewing your posts online.

Rich media publishing
Writer makes publishing rich media as easy as sending e-mail. Insert and customize photos, videos, maps, tags, and lots of other cool content—then click the “Publish” button. It’s that easy.

Compatible with your blog service
Writer can to publish to Windows Live Spaces, Sharepoint, WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, Moveable Type, Community Server, and many other weblog services.

Powerful editing features
Creating compelling blog posts is much easier with the ability to insert and edit tables, check spelling as you type, and format and hyperlink content at your fingertips.

Offline editing
Now you can blog anytime, from anywhere. Writer synchronizes drafts on your blog with changes you make when you're offline, so you don't have to worry about reconciling different versions.

[felix8406]

I heard about writer, but have not try it. When downloading Windows Live Mail, you get the option to download Writer and other applications. Good info Ant; I will try it.

[ProCookie]

Yes its great Felix, so much easier and faster than online based blogging tools.

[dazzlin]

There's some shareware and freeware that works with Vista over at Vista Junkie too.

[felix8406]

Another free todownload Office Suite that's hot right now is IBM® Lotus® Symphony™. It's a set of three applications for creating word, spreadsheets and presentations documents. You can check it out at: http://symphony.lotus.com/software/l...hony/home.jspa.

The file is about 138MB to download.

[crabby]

I still believe OpenOffice to be the most universal free office suite. It is truely multiplatform which allows linux users etc to use it with ease. It is also so widely used now that Office 2007 supports its formats.

http://www.openoffice.org

crabby

[felix8406]

I've used OpenOffice, but I keep going back to MS Office. Maybe because I'm more familiar with it. Now, when it comes to price, free wins every time and OpenOffice is free. I'm yet to try Symphony and it's in Beta stage, but apparently it was downloaded 100,000 times in its first week - perhaps because the IBM name behind it and because it's also free. Like OpenOffice, it provides the three most popular office applications in an open source format; documents, presentation and spreadsheet.

[felix8406]

I tried opening an Office 2007 word document with OpenOffice and IBM Symphony, but apparently the format is not yet supported. The word document was saved with new .docx Office 2007 default extension.

Although Office 2007 OpenSource format called OpenXML is based on XML, it has not yet being approved by the OpenSource international standard. Until it’s approved, and even after it has been approved, I supposed it could take a while because it catches on. My suggestion, and this is what I’ve been doing, save the files with the standard .doc extension; this way you can be sure your document can be read by anyone that has OpenOffice, Symphony, AbiWord or the many other free available programs.

[Snuffy]

Why not simply save in the old format. which Office 2007 does allow.

[felix8406]

That's what I suggested, the standard .doc extension.