How You can Save Thousands of Dollars with Open Source Software - Video Tutorial

How You can Save Thousands of Dollars with Open Source Software - Gaurav Bhola from Garv Financial on Vimeo.

TUTORIAL TEXT

Welcome to Garv Financial.
Just a quick reminder, please remember to rate the tutorial five stars at the end.
This is Gaurav Bhola and the tutorial is about the “Open Source Software can be Powerful Business Tools.”

This tutorial covers several open source software for consumer and business. These software are comparable in features to retail software and promote productivity and efficiency.

Why pay for software when open source alternatives are available?
You can literally save thousands of dollars over your lifetime by using open source software. If you are a consumer most of the software is free. If you are a business, you goal is to maintain low overhead, thus opens source alternative makes sense as there are no or little costs. The software can be modified to meet your needs, as well as updates are frequently available at no cost.

Office Productivity Suites

OpenOffice is the most comprehensive free open source office suite available and it can hold its own Microsoft Office. The suite includes Writer, a word processor, Impress, a presentation program, Base, a database program, Calc, a spreadsheet program, Draw, a graphics editor, and Math, a mathematical formula editor.

The suite lets you save files in multiple formats, including Microsoft, which means that you can view/edit Open Office files in Microsoft suites. OpenOffice has been growing in popularity across organizational, business, and consumer lines. Also, it can export files as PDF.

This project emanates from the corridors of IBM. This office project financed by IBM contains Presentations, a PowerPoint alternative, Documents, a word processor, Spreadsheets, a spreadsheet program. Also, Symphony supports the Lotus SmartSuite formats, Microsoft Office, and OpenDocument format (ODF). Like OpenOffice, it can export files as Portable Document Format (PDF) files.

Another open source community project that contains AbiWord, a word processor, GNOME-DB, a database, and Gnumeric, a spreadsheet.

This is a true gift to the Apple community, NeoOffice. It is a comprehensive office productivity suite, including word processing, presentation, spreadsheet, database, and drawing programs for Mac OS. It is based on the popular OpenOffice suite.

Web-based Online Office Applications or Suites

Zoho Office Suite has become the premier web office suite to use. The multitudes of offerings are amazing for the businesses and consumers alike. I am just going to quickly run through their current offerings:

• Zoho Writer - Word Processor

• Zoho Sheet – Spreadsheets

• Zoho Show – Presentation

• Zoho Creator - Database Application

• Zoho Notebook - Note Taker

• Zoho Wiki - full-featured Wiki

• Zoho Planner – Organizer

• Zoho Chat - Group Decisions Faster

• Zoho Start – Documents

• Zoho Mail - Web-based Email Service

• Zoho Projects - Project Management Software

• Zoho CRM - On-Demand CRM Solution

• Zoho Invoice - Invoicing. Quick and Easy

• Zoho Meeting - Web Conferencing

• Zoho DB & Reports - Reporting & BI Service

• Zoho People - People & Recruitment Management

• Zoho Business - Business Solutions

The data files saved on Zoho servers allow for synchronization back to the local PC. Integration plugins are available for Microsoft Excel and Word. Also, , browser plugins give you the flexibility to open text documents or spreadsheets without the requirement for installing word processing or spreadsheet applications.

Desktop widgets allow you to run Zoho programs on your desktops just like traditional office programs. And just when you thought that this was all from the ZOHO team, they give you Mobile Zoho Sheet, Show, and Writer available at iZoho. iZoho is available for Facebook and iPhone.

ThinkFree Online offers Write, a word processor, Show, a presentation program, and Calc, a spreadsheet. The online office suite supports Microsoft Office file formats. There is also a project management/collaboration program called Workspace.

Google’s is a web-based spreadsheet, word processor, and presentation suite. A nice feature of Docs is that it lets you collaborate in real-time with people to create and edit documents.

Alternatives for Microsoft Outlook (PIM)

A personal information manager (PIM) and workgroup information management (WIM) tool or what you might call fancy words for Microsoft Outlook alternatives. It has similar functionality and user interface with Outlook, combining e-mail, calendar, address book, and task list management functions. Also, supports iCalendar, full-text indexing of all incoming mail, “Search Folders,” email filters, and can be synchronized with Palm Pilot , mobiles phones, and PDAs.

Another exciting product from the Mozilla team. The Thunderbird email application with Lightning is an extension for iCalendar that adds calendar and scheduling functionality.

Alternative to Microsoft Project

Quite possibly the most popular project management tool after Microsoft Project, OpenProj. It is a complete alternative to the expensive Microsoft Project, supports existing Project files.

The second most popular open source project management application after OpenProj. dotProject is a web-based, multi-user, multi-language, Project Management application. It can handle Projects and Tasks, Departments and Contacts, To Do lists, Companies, and Resources (equipment, etc).

Alternative Microsoft Publisher

Lookout Microsoft Publisher, Scribus is here. A free desktop publishing application that offers broad page layout features comparable to Adobe PageMaker but not Adobe InDesign

My name is Gaurav Bhola.
Thank you, very much for watching the tutorial on “How You can Save Thousands of Dollars with Open Source Software.” More financial tutorials are available at GarvFinancial.com.

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