I wanted to speak today about free software and whether it’s really worth your time to look for it and download it.
I have to go back to the late 1980s when every weekend I would drive out to the Oldsmar flea market because there was a guy there who had a booth. He sold three-and-a-half-inch floppy disks of what was then called shareware. I could not wait to go out there every week and see what was new. Please understand, was long before there was internet. Somewhere in a box around my house, I have a whole bunch of those floppy disks floating around somewhere.
But today, with the marvelous technology that we have, we can get all kinds of free software off the internet. However, keep in mind that free is not always free. There is a difference between free software and software that makes money by showing you 8 million ads or collecting and bundling all kinds of data from you. You must be careful. You really want to stick to trusted sources.
I, right now, rely on a website called Ninite. There’s also SourceForge and MajorGeeks. I have not used those two, but if you go to Ninite, you will find a list of all kinds of available free software. The download is easy, it does the installation, and it stays up to date. Many of the free programs that are out there are excellent.
Open source software is very fascinating, but do know that you want to be careful, as I said before, about where you get it. Because it’s open source, people can go in and make changes that you might not be happy with. You want to check reviews and ratings and things like that.
A thing to be very aware of is that scammers create fake download pages. I use a particular audio program myself for editing, and when I got a new computer, I went to download that program again onto the new computer. Golly gee, I had a very difficult time finding the correct website to download it because there were about five or six different sites that said I needed to download this. Somehow it did not look trustworthy to me, and I was afraid that I could be downloading a virus. So you need to be careful. Again, if it’s listed on Ninite, chances are very good that it is safe and you will be very happy with it.
The other thing you need to watch for is extra programs. Sometimes free software sneaks in all kinds of other things that will change settings on your computer that you don’t want them to. I have a friend who is a member of our club who has this happen to him all the time. Then he will call me up, and I’ll go to his house. There’s a different browser that’s there, there’s all kinds of junk that he has to look at every time he turns on his computer, and it’s just a mess. The only way to fix it was that he had to bring it into the club, and they wiped the hard drive clean and started it over again. So be very careful about that.
Now, even free programs have security flaws, so if there’s a free program that you’re using, check for updates. And again, if you’re looking for an office suite, for instance, there are a lot of good free ones that are out there. The one I like the best is LibreOffice. For a photo editor, if you don’t want to spend the money on Photoshop, GIMP is excellent. I use in my audio editing almost all the time a free program that keeps getting better by the week, it seems, called Audacity.
The other thing that you need to worry about is when you see a piece of software that says that it’s free—actually, some of them have time limits on them, leading you to fall in love with it and then all of a sudden discover that there’s going to be a $100 charge to keep using it. Be careful about that. Read the fine print before you download.
A lot of free software can be just as powerful as the paid versions. I’m going to give you some examples. Let’s go to free video editing software:
DaVinci Resolve is free. They have a version you can go up there and get for free. There are people who are making movies and television shows using DaVinci Resolve. They have a free version and they have a paid version that does a little bit more than the free version, but the free version is very high-end and it’s wonderful. It’s what most people are going to use all the time.
Adobe Premiere Rush is free from Adobe. I happen to like Shotcut is a pretty easy-to-use video editing program. It’s pretty simple.
Blender is another one that’s out there that works rather well.
CapCut is very popular among people on YouTube and very popular for people on TikTok. As a matter of fact, TikTok owns it and they keep it updated for you.
ClipChamp is probably one of my favorite free video editing programs. We had a young man come to the club and demonstrate the use of it. He had a video that he made. If you go to our YouTube channel, which is Tampa Bay Technology Center, you will find his excellent tutorial on how to use ClipChamp.
Summary
So just to summarize: be careful when you get free software. Get it from a good source like Ninite and other trusted venues, and only take what you need. I know people who just download free software to have it, but I only download what I need. My computer is not a hoarding computer. I hope yours isn’t either.
Have a terrific day, and we’ll see you next Wednesday. Bye!