A Sweet Deal Indeed (Thanks Steve).

I really, really shouldn’t be doing stuff like this for free. However, until I figure out how to monetise it properly, I’ll just have to share the news and let the vendor, in this case Microsoft, get the free ad.

Microsoft is making Microsoft Office 2007 Student and Home Edition available at N6,500.00 for 6 weeks starting from the 15th of December, and you will be legally allowed to install it on up to 3 computers. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a very sweet deal. To give you some perspective, I saw the software currently available in a store for N18,000.00. So it will be going for about a third of the price. I should warn you though that this version contains only Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. So no Microsoft Access for the database aficionados and no Microsoft Outlook either. Still, the deal is a sweet one anyway you want to look at it.

This offer is available for Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya. According to Microsoft, you can walk into any store where software is legitimately sold during that period and get it at that price. They should have advertising available prominently displaying the price. So no one should be able to get away with selling the pack at an inflated price.

So if you live outside these zones, you are out of luck. On the other hand, if you are a student of a British or American University, you get Office 2007 Ultimate and Windows 7 Professional at about $30 for Windows and $60 for Office Ultimate. You can access the student offers here. By the way, from my experience, if you are a student of an online program like the University of Liverpool Online, you can get these deals as the validation criteria is having a valid email address from an academic institution in these countries. So if you have an “.ac.uk” or a “.edu” email address, then you are well on your way to getting good software at rock bottom, yet legitimate, pricing. Now they would only extend that offer to Nigerian Universities where we really need those kinds of offers… 

Of course, as I have mentioned before, you can get OpenOffice.org at a much better price: completely free and it can do most things that Microsoft Office can do. You just need to download and install. Most of us, do prefer MS Office. We grew up with it and is the de facto standard that everyone else is playing catch up to. Still, free is free is free.

Be that as it may, we appreciate Mr. Ballmer’s magnanimity. Thanks Steve, nice one.

Dej.

 

A Price of Zero

Most Lagosians who started working with computers about the same time that I did had their first experiences with computers assembled from parts bought in the legendary Otigba Street area of Ikeja. It wasn't just the hardware that came from Otigba. The software came from there too - and it was pirated. Many a sophisticated computer user today would never have had the software their life depends on if not for the “Mega” CDs that put thousands of dollars worth of software on single CDs that sold for not more than a few hundred naira.

Now many of us actually pay the authorised price for software. We may not agree that the price is fair - and the truth is that software pricing can be fairly arbitrary, but those are what the people who invested their time and energy in developing the software want us to pay. We can agree to pay the price - otherwise the only right thing to do is not use the software. In any case, companies like Microsoft are heavily investing in all sorts of mechanisms to protect their software from unauthorised use.

Despite my Otigba roots, I strongly advocate that people pay the legal price for the software they use. Because I work in IT, a lot of people have approached me to "help" them install Microsoft Office on their computers and Norton Antivirus on their new laptops. I always advise them to buy authorised copies. Often times they don't take the suggestion seriously.

The thing is software isn't cheap. Windows itself makes up a significant part of the cost of a prebuilt computer. Office is another 200 dollars or so depending on the version - and antivirus software can be an annual subscription as much as 40 dollars. Which is why I also suggest to people use free and open source versions of the software.

There are lots of free alternatives to the software we have grown used to. Many of them work the same way as the more familiar ones. Even those with fewer features are very attractive at the price they come at. I'll give examples of free software and the familiar non-free software that they replace. Everyone of them can be downloaded from the internet.

Ubuntu Linux (alternative to Microsoft Windows).

Windows is the only computer operating system most of us know, but there are a huge number out there. Ubuntu Linux is probably the easiest one for Windows users to grasp with the least amount of effort. The thing about Ubuntu and other forms of Linux is the that they belong to an entire ecosystem of free software. Linux is also less prone to viruses obviating the need for antivirus software.

Openoffice.org (Alternative to Microsoft Office).

Openoffice.org (yes, the “.org” is part of the software’s name) is a full featured office productivity software suite. It includes the usual suspects – a word processor, a spreadsheet program, a presentation program and even a database tool. It's greatest strength as an alternative to the Microsoft suite is that it can create, open and save most files created in Office without losing the formatting. This means that you can have Openoffice.org on your home PC and still be able to use files that were created by office users or create documents at home and use them on Microsoft Office installations.

AVG Antivirus Free (Alternative to Norton/MacAfee/CA antivirus).

There are several free antivirus suites out there. Many of them are free offerings that are a reduced feature version of a paid for version. For example AVG Free is the free version of AVG antivirus suite. Avast also has free version. Many of these free versions have limited feature sets devoid of things like antispyware, firewalls, spam filters and other security tools. On the other hand, there are many standalone products that do these things by themselves and they are free.

Gimp (Alternative to Adobe Photoshop).

For those who do their own photo-editing, both professional and otherwise, Photoshop is the preferred choice. Of course, only the truly professional are willing to pay the hefty premium the software fetches. Adobe have some scaled down versions that are cheap, but for a completely free alternative, the Gimp is the most preferred choice.

DoPDF (Alternative to Adobe Acrobat).

We all use PDFs, the Adobe document format that is the preferred format for storing and sharing completed documents. Historically, to create them you had to have the full Acrobat software - which isn't free, separate from the reader which is free. Now very many tools can save as PDF including OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office 2007. There are also standalone PDF "printer" software such as DoPDF that after installation you treat like a printer and print any document to and it creates a PDF. This is one of those examples where the non-free application gives you many more capabilities, but most of us don’t need those features.

These are just a few examples of free software all which will run on Windows and Linux (except the antivirus which is Windows only). I have deliberately left out internet-based options - software that only works in a web browser while you are connected to the internet.

Let’s do something. Post a non-free software that you use in the comments, and I’ll try to point you at a free alternative. You can also do this via my twitter account.There is a whole constellation of rich software for the very attractive price of zero that are more than adequate to your needs.

Dej.