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Advice on free PC software, multimedia and web design for individuals and churches

Below are personal recommendations on programs and techniques for your consideration. (The adverts on the left will offer alternative commercial products and services)

Microsoft office is expensive - the latest may be offered in a personal edition for Ł99. There is a freeware alternative:

Openoffice.org 2.0 is free the producers are committed to the concept of open source. Download from www.openoffice.org it includes a word processor, spreadsheet, database, presentations (powerpoint) and a drawing program. It can use and produce office compatible files. It is very powerful and stable. This program is also frequently available on magazine CD's if you don't want to download it.

The various modules do everything that you would expect them to. I would find it difficult to wax lyrical over a word processor, spreadsheet or database. The drawing program looks is very fully featured. I seem to get a drawing program with everything so I tend to stick with what I know. Did I say that the best program is the one that you know how to do the job with! There is a maths equation editor - if you need one! You don't have to use every item in the suite you can use it just to fill in what you don't have. The presentation manager is fully featured. It can also work with powerpoint files useful if a number of people are working on a presentation - you can give copies of openoffice to as many people as you like. There can be minor problems with layout though as a presentation is loaded from openoffice to powerpoint.

In the presentation manager you can I quote:

OpenOffice.org Impress lets you create professional slide shows that can include charts, drawing objects, text, multimedia and a variety of other items. If you want, you can even import and modify Microsoft PowerPoint presentations.

For on-screen slide shows, animation, slide transitions and multimedia are a few of the techniques you can use to make your presentation more exciting.

Creating Vector Graphics

Many of the tools for creating vector graphics in OpenOffice.org Draw are available in OpenOffice.org Impress.

Creating Slides

OpenOffice.org Impress provides you with templates to create professional-looking slides.

You can also assign a number of dynamic effects to your slides, including animation and transition effects.

Creating Presentations

Several views or pages are available when you design a slide show. For example, the Slide Sorter displays an overview of your slides in thumbnail form, while the Handout page contains both the slide and the text you want to distribute to the audience.

OpenOffice.org Impress also lets you rehearse the timing of your slide show.

Publishing Presentations

You can publish your slides on-screen, as handouts, or as HTML documents.

Giving Presentations

OpenOffice.org Impress gives you the choice of running a slide show automatically or manually.

All in all the program is not quite as feature rich as the Microsoft Office but it is certainly a contender. And of course the program is free but you can make a donation.

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