Beyond the monetary cost for software, other irksome issues arise with popular software titles such as Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Office. These two titles, for example, have little market competition as they have aggressively eliminated their competitors through buyouts and forging exclusive deals with hardware or operating system vendors. Without fair-market competition, these monopolies restrict innovation and create stagnancy in software development.

Not Quite the Final Version

Microsoft is one of the most infamous examples of software stagnancy. After dominating the market with Windows XP and Internet Explorer version 6 (going so far as to declare it as the "final version" of Internet Explorer). What Microsoft didn’t anticipate, however, was the market share gain made by the once the open-source browser Firefox. Microsoft was forced to change its “final version” of Internet Explorer, quickly releasing version 7. While some in-roads are being made into dismantling the Microsoft monopoly on software, consumers still need some direction in choosing reliable alternatives.

Below are some of CartaNova’s favourite choices for open source software (and links to where you can get them).

Mozilla Firefox

Web Browser

Originally known as Phoenix, a reference to its rising from the ashes of the failed Netscape Navigator 5, Mozilla Firefox has been the predominant open-source alternative to Internet Explorer. Today Firefox is capable of browsing nearly every web page out there.  In many cases, it actually performs better than Internet Explorer because it follows universally recognized "WC3" Standards, which Internet Explorer 8 has trouble with at times. Firefox has been gaining ground in market share recently, reaching close to 30% as of April 2010.

Firefox's greatest features are its Add-Ons, which allow you to customize your browser. Want to control your music player from your browser while you surf the net? Want to post a link to your twitter account in one click? With its numerous simple to use Add-Ons, Firefox is an excellent choice for a reliable, free browser.

Mozilla Thunderbird

Email Client

With the predominance of webmail, not as many email users are familiar with email clients. If you're wondering what we mean by "email client," we recommend you read our post about email clients.

At CartaNova, we recommend Thunderbird, which is Mozilla's free email companion to the search engine Firefox. Having recently made a major release, Thunderbird is a fully capable and versatile email client. Much like Firefox, it also has a variety of Add-Ons available, such as applications that allow calendaring and task management. Thunderbird also features (as of version 3.0) a "Smart Folder" capability, where you can see one inbox for all of your email accounts – each email accounts still remains separate, but you can view them all in one space, which saves a lot of time if you have multiple accounts.

OpenOffice

Office Suite

Everyone needs some sort of Office Suite -- it's hard to avoid needing to open Microsoft Office .doc or .docx files, or some day having to make a spreadsheet. If spending a hundred bucks just to write documents and make the occasional PowerPoint seems frivolous, when so many other far more specialized applications are available for free, OpenOffice is a fine alternative.

Featuring "Write" (word processor), "Calc" (spreadsheet), "Impress" (presentation slides), "Draw" (art design), and "Base" (database), OpenOffice is a highly developed and free alternative to Microsoft's, Apple's, and Corel's pricey office suites.

ClamWin

Anti-Virus Software

One of the most unfortunate necessities in being a Windows user is the threats of malware and viruses. Long-dominated by companies that sell annual updates to catch the latest viruses out there, anti-virus software is starting to see some open-source alternatives.

ClamWin is one of the first open-source anti-virus applications to gain widespread praise and acceptance in the Windows community.

Note that even if you have an anti-virus, it's always a good idea to follow best safe practices online. Don't run software you download online from a source you aren't sure about (or isn't well-reviewed -- a quick Google search can sometimes help find what's okay and what's not), and run a browser other than Internet Explorer, it still has many security flaws that are exploitable by malicious websites.