Thursday, December 31, 2009

2009, free software

The year 2009 I will remember for many personal reasons. For work, it was the year I started a personal experiment with free software. Hypothesis: You don't have to pay exorbitant fees to Cupertino to use something that works really well.

1. While still on the Mac, I went completely to Open Office. No more MS Office, no more Pages.

2. I moved out of EndNote to Zotero and eventually Mendeley. Some people are afraid Mendeley will start charging, but Mendeley is clear that your ref library is yours, and you can walk away with it at any time, in EndNote, RIS or BibTex format.

3. I dropped SAS and SPSS for R.

4. I stopped using my MacBook and moved to Ubuntu on a Lenovo. I don't do a lot of photo or video. Linux had always intimidated me, but Ubuntu is user-friendly and has a good community of support.

More to follow . . .

2 comments:

Mr. Gunn said...

Funny how it's the free, community supported software that ends up being the best, isn't it?

Let me know if you ever run into problems with Mendeley. I'm a lead user and might be able to help.

nocx said...

So far it's early, but all systems are go.

Thank you for the kind offer. I may need a hand!

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