Three Free Software PC Products

I'm here to blog about free software that everyone can use and bring a lot of benefits in the end for them.  It's always nice to find something free and especially if it does pretty awesome things for you without having to pay a ton. 

1. Spotify

This software program I really love especially if I don't have the money to buy music.  You can look up any type of song and it will play the whole entire song or album for you!  It's all for free, but the only thing is you can't download the music from it for free without paying.  You can only play the music on your pc or mobile.  While I'm sitting at my pc, I play tons of music as I'm browsing the web.  Compared to iTunes, you only get to hear a sample of the song or among other sites that play 20-30 seconds of it.  The only way it stays free to play music is you have to put up with the advertisements.

Another nice feature on Spotify, is connecting your Facebook with the program.  You can see and share your music among your friends who have it too.

Here you can see what your friends are listening to live on Facebook to the right side of the ticker/newsfeed.

2. Floola

Floola is a free music software that works like iTunes.  It organizes your music for your automatically.  The only reason I like this program and use it for the most part, is the ability to take the music off my iPod.  For example, if I ended up deleting the music from my PC and still have it on my iPod, I can take it right off of it downloading back on to my PC.  Unlike with iTunes, I can't do that.  It will always remain on my iPod where Apple doesn't allow it to be downloaded back on to your PC.  I can understand Apple with the problem of sharing music freely among others, but people make mistakes of accidentally losing their music such as my PC crashing. 

3. Tango

Tango is actually a video chat mobile app, but can now be used on the pc.  It's different though because it's new to pc and the interface of one of the skins you start out with is a mobile phone interface.

It keeps up with all your contacts as well when you sign-in on it from your phone which is convenient if you don't have your phone on you. You only sign-in using your cell phone number and name.

The other interface is just a regular plain window and can be widen to full screen.  The calls come in like a regular phone. Maybe eventually it will have games like they do on the mobile app to play with other people while video chatting.

Hope some will enjoy these programs as much as I have.

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LibreOffice vs OpenOffice

When it comes to finding office programs, it's all about finding something that truly works, and what would be even better is something free.  Microsoft Office is pretty expensive to buy from $99.99 to $399.99, but if one is willing to take the dive then good for them :).  For those who want something free and can work just as well, they can use LibreOffice and OpenOffice.  Both are open source office programs that offer the same programs like Microsoft Office.

As far as I know, OpenOffice has been discontinued whereas LibreOffice is reigning as the top program to use now.  OpenOffice has faced problems with changing different handlers whereas the former OpenOffice project members created LibreOffice as a trustworthy program that was kept updated.

I had a hard time trying to compare the two because they were practically the same to me within it's appearance, its menus, its interface, etc.  Anyway, here you noticed the interface of both as you begin to pick which program to use:

OpenOffice automatically has the sidebar opened which seems convenient and can be tucked away easily. OpenOffice opened a lot faster than LibreOffice by five seconds on my computer.

 Here is LibreOffice using the document program. They both look similiar besides not having a sidebar.

I have done a lot of PowerPoint presentations in the past, so I was curious about their templates.  It seems OpenOffice offers a lot more and better looking ones than LibreOffice.  Below there are two pictures, there was no templates listed in LibreOffice.  LibreOffice only had a few PowerPoint presentation templates.  I kept clicking around and it didn't load any compared to OpenOffice unless it's a glitch. Good thing though they both have websites to download templates for each program.

 Overall, I like both programs, but I seem more accustomed to OpenOffice.  I feel more comfortable with the interface of it even if it may be alike with LibreOffice.  Just seems more welcoming for me and it loaded faster as well on my computer.


Edit 10/9/13: I used both programs the other day to print of questions for a test, it ran off the page, and it had missing questions at the end of each page.  It doesn't limit the text running over the margins automatically...urgh!

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