I was at a family gathering this weekend and the topic of spyware came up. Being “the computer guy” in the collection of family members assembled, I began to share about ways to deal with spyware and junk mail. I made my usual recommendations for email, browser, and office suite replacements, and most of them were surprised to hear of these alternatives to the non-free Microsoft programs that were all they had really known.

Since I keep recommending these things over and over again, it occurred to me that making a blog entry I could point folks to would be a good idea, so that the links are all in one place.

Here are three things you can do to make your computing experience more positive:

1. Stop using Internet Explorer
2. Stop using Microsoft Outlook
3. Stop using Microsoft Office

Here is how you can do that:

1. Start using Mozilla Firefox
2. Start using Mozilla Thunderbird
3. Start using OpenOffice

The reason to switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox is a no-brainer. Sick of spyware? Not only is Firefox immune to most spyware tactics, it also has features we have been asking Microsoft for since 2000. Did I mention the unbelievably clever extensions that folks have developed and contributed for free? Trust me, take 5 minutes to learn about tabbed browsing, then 20 minutes to learn about extensions, and those two things alone will change your web browsing life. Face it, browsing, and computing as a whole, makes up a larger part of your life than it ever has; why have it be sub-standard?

Thunderbird is an email client that is less-resource-intensive than Outlook and has adaptive filtering for Junk mail. You teach it what is Junk mail to you, and it learns to identify Junk mail proactively and move it to a Junk folder. Spam drives you nuts? Try out Thunderbird; it even has a wizard for migrating your Outlook stuff over.

Now, some folks reading this may be thinking, “why would I go to the trouble of using something besides Microsoft Office?” For 95% of the people who say that about their home computer, I will tell you why: you can stop being a software pirate and thief. Almost everyone who says this to me brought a CD home from work or “borrowed” it from someone else. Guess what? That is patently illegal. You are stealing from Microsoft. Do you wonder why Microsoft gets all fired up about anti-piracy and comes up with these Draconian measures to control it like “activation”? It is because people “get it from work” and are stealing from them. So, if you don’t feel that Office is worth whatever price they get for it these days, then get off your butt and evaluate an alternative instead of stealing from Microsoft. OpenOffice leads the pack in that arena; check it out.

I will not yet recommend that people do something so drastic as try to move to a Linux distribution, although those options are vastly improved. Start with these recommendations; it won’t be a huge disruption, and the experience will be mostly all-gain and you can experience firsthand the quality of open source and free software.