CHRISTMAS GIFTS FOR YOUR PC

[Mark Gilligan is TTP's own "Marco," known to all participants in the TTP User Forum.  His first column appeared last month:  Marco The Wizard?  His column will be a regular feature in 2008.]

It's the gifting time of the year and for your technological needs we have some suggestions that may make your life easier and your wallet less depleted.  Here are a few…

The anti-virus software package offered by AVG is one of the best available – and it's free!

If you want the full capacity of Adobe's Acrobat Professional Apps and don't have the several hundred dollars in the budget you can get its equivalent for only $9.95 at pdf995.com. 

PDF995 has 2500 corporations signed on saving large amounts of revenue on a piece of software that does just what Adobe's does.  You can create PDF files, sign digital documents and edit PDF documents written by Adobe's expensive version. Check it outJ

If you are in need of a free Spyware detection software try Spybot.  I have found that this little beauty will sometimes catch things that costly commercial programs will miss.

How about a free OS for your Intel processor machine? Take a walk on the wild side and download Ubuntu.  This software was made possible by a company called Canonical, sponsored by a gentlemen called Mark Shuttlesworth from South Africa.

His claim to fame was selling an open source program to large financial institutions making him a half a billion dollars overnight. He also spent several million of his own to go up on a Russian space flight.  Ubuntu means "humankind or humanity" and he has dedicated his life to this purpose after having the financial freedom to do so.

If you would like a suite of Office Utilites that does not cost hundreds of dollars, will read existing Microsoft documents and also create them, you can use Open Office. It works with PCs and comes bundled with Linux OS versions like Suse and Ubuntu.

If you want a poor man's Photoshop, then one can download Gimp, the graphical tool that comes with a lot of Linux OS's and can also be downloaded for Windows users.

This is short and sweet as I have been extremely busy doing what puts bread on the table.  But I plan to be prolific in the New Year. Have a wonderful Christmas and holiday season. God bless you all!

Marco