. . . continued from Hot News Wordprocessing: correspondence, business plans, general planning, reports, forms, ad copy, opening files sent by colleagues, suppliers, etc. Financial Management: you need something to do the books, set up a budget, dump data into a tax program or spreadsheet for your Accountant Web Browser: research, research, research Web Design: graphical web design (as opposed to hand coding) to set up and maintain the business web site E-mail Client: send, receive and organize e-mail Page Layout: design business collateral including brochures, flyers, letterhead, business cards, etc. Product Design: CAD, illustration, photo editing to support the design and creation of new products Image & Photo Editing: modifying, improving and managing images of all kinds for design, advertising, catalogs, portfolios and promotional purposes Antivirus: no explanation necessary Firewall: access the world while preventing bad things from messing with you System Maintenance: defrag hard drives, clean up the Registry, delete bad or useless files, undelete mismanaged files

After helping the nice person assemble her list, my first response was basically "No Way!" You can't get all of this for free. Being relatively young, smart, extremely talented and basically broke, she reacted by saying, "There has to be a way!" So a new project was born on the spot: Can You Really Do It All For Free?

Let's take this stuff in order.

Wordprocessing using OpenOffice is a breeze. The suite provides a very competent word processor, spell checking and a powerful spreadsheet component. Windows, Mac and Linux versions are all well supported. ABI Word works reasonably well, but spell checking is somewhat limited. OpenOffice works identically well on Windows, Mac OS and Linux. Have a look at Siag Office, another Linux suite that's free and reasonably easy to use.

Financial Management is a problem except for spreadsheet software. Calc (included in OpenOffice) is very good. Other freebies such as Sphygmic Spreadsheet also work, but stability is suspect. Unstable software subject to crashes and lockups doesn't do anything to help productivity. Bookkeeping and bank account management are another matter altogether and there's nothing available for free—not even something unstable. There's no way for a private developer to access the banking system, proprietary accounting software formats and other necessities in order to create something that's useful. There are several excellent packages available for Linux including GnuCash, but the drawback is that you can't download a bank file directly into the software when doing reconciliation.

Web Browser competition is fierce. If you like the functionality of Internet Explorer but yearn for the features of Firefox, download and install Maxthon or Avant Browser. For something different and independent, download and install Firefox. Of all the freebies, Firefox has the fewest security holes at this time. Windows, Mac and Linux are equally well-served.

E-mail Clients abound, with several free ones being highly regarded for their versatility and stability. The ad-supported free version of Eudora is among the most popular, with Pegasus bringing up the rear. Both programs work quite well, but Pegasus is ad-free. Outlook Express and Mac Mail are supplied free of charge with their respective operating systems. Linux competes quite well here, offering several, good quality free e-mail clients.

Page Layout software is difficult to come by for free. This type of software is simply too complex to be produced as a useful freebie by anybody sane. Nothing for Mac. Nothing for Windows. If you're using Linux you can download and install Scribus which is nice and powerful and should provide almost any SOHO or small business with all the power needed to design and create compelling stuff.

Product Design? CAD/CAM? Surprisingly, despite the relative complexity of this sort of software, there are lots of choices, mostly 2D. Minos, CADStd Lite, etc., etc. There's not much to speak of available for Mac, but Linux adherents will find a good selection.

Image & Photo Editing is well covered by free programs. Windows, Mac & Linux benefit from keen competition among shareware and freeware authors. For Windows and for simple photo editing and image management, there's nothing on the market right now that can touch Goggle's Picasa for ease of use and depth and breadth of features. Mac OS X ships with the excellent iPhoto for basic editing and fairly robust image management. Linux users can do just as much with the GIMP and mapiVi.

Antivirus concerns can be met head on with AVG Antivirus for Windows. At this point in time, neither Mac OS X or Linux users have to be concerned about viruses to any great degree. That will change as Mac OS and Linux penetrate home and small business desktops more deeply. For now, you're relatively safe. Windows users are not safe. Operating a Windows PC without well-supported and up-to-date antivirus software is akin to chewing on a razor blade (or something equally goofy).

Firewalls are no longer a matter of hit & miss (no matter what your level of computer skill). Buy a Router. Even if you've only got one computer connected to the Internet, buy a router. All of the router products currently offered for sale to the consumer home and small business market contain built-in firewalls. As a matter of fact, with a decent router from Linksys, SMC, Netgear, Actiontec and a couple of others, you really don't need a software firewall (such as ZoneAlarm). On the other hand, if you do a lot of web browsing, lots of file downloading and lots of research, ZoneAlarm will help to prevent malicious programs (which you've inadvertently allowed onto your computer) from using your machine to get back out to the Internet.

System Maintenance can be handled competently by the utilities built into Windows, Mac OS and Linux. Despite the fact that there are innumerable fine and decent utilities out there (defragmentation, drive partitioning, cache cleaners, undelete programs and so on), it's inadvisable to entrust your precious system and business data files to anything other than the operating system or fully supported commercial software.

If you're keeping score, it's apparent that you can get everything you need out of Windows and Linux with the notable exception of the bank account access software. Mac OS offers an awful lot of great Apple stuff bundled and integrated with OS X, but there aren't a lot of free third-party programs to choose from. So the answer to the original question definitely appears to be platform independent, which is good news.

There's something missing, still, and that's where the free ride ends. I'm talking about proprietary software developed specifically for pottery and stoneware designers and craftspeople. There's a free Glaze Calculator for Windows, but the other platforms have to fall back on commercial programs including the well-known Insight (Windows, Mac & Linux) and GlazeMaster (Windows & Mac), PlateScribe (Mac only) and a handful of other odds & ends. It's not a great collection by any means, but that seems to be how pottery and stoneware craftspeople prefer things.

If you don't have a Linux computer already, setting one up solely to take advantage of free stuff is pointless because almost everything you need is already available free of charge for Windows and Mac. You'll have to spend $600-900 to purchase and set up a new Linux computer, not to mention the cost of your time for all the hours and days needed to learn and understand Linux. So Linux is out—potters and stoneware craftspeople rejoice. On the other hand, if you're already up and running on Linux, purchasing a copy of Insight will set you back a lousy $59, which is cheap enough for anyone. The biggest drawback for Linux users is the lack of bank-compatible financial software, commercial or otherwise, and that alone may be enough to eliminate Linux from the freebie sweepstakes. Windows and Mac users can take advantage of QuickBooks, Quicken, Microsoft Money and a huge selection of accounting, point-of-sale and other bookkeeping software at prices ranging between $50 and $200.

The bottom line is that you can't get it all for free. You can come close. You can keep costs to an absolute minimum while ensuring your business is properly supported, but you can't run a business without spending some money on software and hardware. When you're starting your small business, make sure you budget enough money for the computer and operating system of choice along with sufficient cash to cover the other important bits needed to help run your business and produce the designs and products you dream up.

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