Every so often, I’ll hear from a friend or a reader who wants me to point them toward a great deal on a new computer. “My old computer is so slow!” is a frequent refrain from them, and if that’s what I hear, I usually suggest something besides replacing their hardware.

Simply put, the only time I’ve upgraded a computer in the last several years has been due to hardware failure or complete unavailability of applications. A “slower” computer is something that’s absolutely solvable if you’re willing to put a little bit of time into it (and a bit of money for software applications), most of which can be done in the background while you web surf.

More than a few times over the last several months, I’ve responded to such an email by making a big list of all of the things I tend to do to a “slow” computer to restore most of the speed it had when newly purchased. Of course, whenever I find myself writing what amounts to an article more than once, I realize that I should just turn this into an article for The Simple Dollar because, clearly, this information will be helpful to more than just one person.

Most of the advice below applies mostly to PCs. Macs have some minor slowdown issues, but they’re nowhere near as urgent as the slowdown issues that a PC can generate over time; plus, the Mac slowdown issues are usually resolved by applying the things that do apply to Macs from this list.

So, without further ado, here are the things I recommend doing to computers that are experiencing significant slowdown. As with all such software, use these at your own discretion. Read the documentation before you use them and understand the inherent risks in using any form of computer software.

Run a good antivirus scan
One common factor that slows down computer use is a virus or some other form of malignant program running on your computer, gobbling down resources for some nefarious reason. There are a lot of different varieties and flavors of these, so a robust antivirus program running on your computer is a must.

My preferred free antivirus program is Avast Free Antivirus. I’ve been using it for a long time and have had great success with it identifying viruses, particularly after installing it on the computers of friends and family.

Run a good spyware scan
Spyware is the not-quite-as-nefarious-but-still-annoying cousin of the stuff above. These packages usually just cause unwanted advertisements to regularly pop up on your computer, doing things like redirecting your web browser to ad sites or other websites when you don’t want to go there or simply showing you ads out of nowhere.

My preferred free spyware protection program is Microsoft Security Essentials. It does a very good job of identifying and removing spyware and adware from my computer; I’ve not had trouble with either in quite a while. This package also includes an antivirus component, but I prefer the above antivirus package as it seems to catch a thing here or there that Security Essentials misses.

Uninstall unwanted programs
It’s worthwhile to occasionally check your installed programs and remove any that you no longer use. This saves hard drive space, can sometimes remove programs that are staying in memory, and will remove some unneeded registry entries that are just causing a slight bit of slowdown on your computer.

Go to Start > Control Panel > Install/Uninstall Programs (this varies a bit depending on your specific flavor of Windows). You should have a list of programs available to you. Choose to uninstall anything that you don’t actively use.

Run a good registry cleaner
Another element of your computer that can cause slowdown is the registry. In simple terms, the registry is a place where pieces of information that need to be shared between programs is stored. The more programs you install on your computer, the more registry entries your computer has. The more registry entries your computer has, the longer registry lookups take (imagine a dictionary with more and more words in it). Since your computer does quite a lot of registry lookups, an overweight registry can certainly contribute to slowdowns.

My preferred free registry cleaner is CCleaner. It goes into your registry, seeks out registry entries for programs that you no longer use, and removes them. This is a great follow-up to malware and virus scans, both of which can put a lot of false registry entries onto your computer.

Use OpenDNS
OpenDNS is simply wonderful. It provides very simple internet protection and filtering, keeping you from visiting unwanted websites or downloading unwanted software in the first place. I consider it essential in any home where non-”power users” are actively using the internet (in other words, any homes with children in them).

You can find out much more about OpenDNS here, including links to download.

If you do all of this stuff, I’m almost sure your computer will be running faster and it’ll stay that way for much longer. These actions will save you from investing hundreds of dollars unnecessarily in new hardware and allow you to keep using them until they legitimately break down instead of just replacing a computer because of minor software issues.

Many of us (myself included) have an ink jet printer at home for home printing needs. We certainly use ours for lots of things, from printing off forms to making pictures of our children for various uses.

It’s also widely known that it’s possible for people to refill their ink cartridges. It’s fairly simple to do, except that different cartridges have different procedures. Here’s an example of such a procedure for an HP 970CXI printer:

You can find the correct procedure for your particular printer’s cartridges by searching on YouTube and/or Google.

Here’s the real question, though: does this practice actually save money?

I did research on the prices using my own printer, a Canon Pixma MP480. You can purchase a refill kit for this printer type for $24.99 plus $6 shipping, a consistent price I’ve seen from many vendors. This refill kit will refill the cartridges you have approximately six times. The best price I’ve found for cartridges for this printer is $59.88 for a double-sized color cartridge and a double-sized black and white cartridge – two color refills and four black and white refills. Refilling it yourself saves you about $7.50 per cartridge refill, in other words.

There are drawbacks to this plan, though.

First, it can be very messy. When I attempted to refill a cartridge, I got ink on my hands that was very hard to wash off and stayed on my skin for a week or so. This, of course, can be avoided by wearing gloves to protect your skin – something I strongly recommend.

Similarly, there’s a risk of staining your clothes and your work area. You’re going to want to do your refilling in an area that wouldn’t be disastrous if ink spilled all over. I recommend spreading some old rags out and doing it in a garage or on an old table. Similarly, wear your old junky clothes when doing this – jeans with stains on them or old t-shirts are perfect.

Second, the ink is often not as good as normal ink. If you’re just printing off pages for personal reading or forms, you’re probably fine. However, if you’re printing off photographs or items you want to put on display, the color difference is often noticeable. One solution to this is to switch out your cartridges depending on your printing use, but that can turn into a real hassle over time.

One good way to avoid this is to shop around for an ink refill kit with a guarantee on it. You might end up paying a premium for such a kit, but that’s acceptable.

From my own experience, the ink refill kit I used with my own printer cartridges was not worth the savings to me. The cartridge refill did not seem to last long and even after a small number of pages, I was already noticing fading. Since we usually print our own photographs, this was unacceptable to us. According to my back-of-the-envelope math, the cost per quality printed page was very high with the refilled cartridges, higher even than buying new ones.

After this experience, I discussed ink refill kits with several people who I know in the IT field who use printer cartridges in the workplace. Most of them have similar comments – they work fine for internal use where crispness and the deepness of the blacks isn’t a big deal, but for external use, they would either use a new cartridge or a refurbished cartridge with a warranty. Refurbished cartridges generally aren’t available for low-end home ink jet printers; that option mostly applies to larger printers.

My conclusion is simple: ink refill kits work if you’re not printing photographs or other documents that you intend to share or archive. If you mostly just print off recipes and such, ink refill kits will easily meet your needs and save you money. If you’re printing off mostly photographs and high-resolution documents where color and crispness are important, shopping around for the best deal on new cartridges is probably the best use of your time, money, and energy.

In other words, it all comes down to how you use your printer.

I spend hours each day at one of my two computers – either my desktop Mac (a Mac Mini – the most cost-effective type of Mac) or my Linux laptop. As a result, finding a core set of software to use for the things that I do every day is vital. Also important to me is that this software is cross-platform – I’d like to be able to run many of the same things on my Mac and on my laptop. I’m also pretty frugal, so I like to look for free software options.

After a lot of searching and a ton of trials of different pieces of software, I’ve found nine pieces of free software (both open-source and otherwise) that I use every day on both my Mac and for Linux – and all of these are available for Windows as well. With only a few little exceptions, these software packages are the only ones I use during a given day. I will also say that in many cases, I have donated to the creators of the software – my belief is that you should support what you actually use, and I certainly do use these pieces of software.

Let’s dig in!

Firefox
http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/

My web browser is my primary tool, and Firefox is unquestionably the best option available to me for cross-platform use. It’s stable, fast, and runs every web application and web site that I need without a bit of worry. (Yes, I’m aware that Opera is an excellent browser as well – I just haven’t felt a compelling reason to switch.)

If you’re still using Internet Explorer, I beg you – give Firefox a try. Fewer security issues, fewer popups, and fewer hassles all around.

Key web applications I use through Firefox include Instapaper (a nifty way to save things I want to read later), Evernote (keeping notes; see below), Remember the Milk (checklists), Gmail (email), and GCal (calendars). I keep these sites on the bookmark bar on both my Mac and on my laptop, so the tools I need are available in both places

Evernote
http://www.evernote.com/

I use Evernote for pretty much all my text editing, not only on my Mac and my laptop, but on my iPod Touch as well and also on my parents’ Windows PC. Evernote is basically just a tool to keep notes synchronized across computers. You create a new note, save it, and then you can see it (and edit it) on any other computer with a web browser. Even better, notes can be little pieces of text, web clippings, voice recordings, or pictures. My notes are a mix of post ideas, things to think about, post drafts, and tons of other things – I literally have hundreds of notes at any given moment.

So why do I list this as a separate application? On Macs and Windows PCs, you can download a separate piece of software that allows you to do the same thing much more cleanly and offline, so that I can continue to edit notes and add new ones if the internet is out. When I’m on my Mac, I use the desktop client – when I’m on my laptop or any other computer, I use the website.

iTunes and Juice
http://www.apple.com/itunes/ and http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/

Listening to music isn’t that big of a deal – I have a pile of mp3s on both computers, but I often listen to radio stations via the web browser. My big concern is podcasts (for those unfamiliar, podcasts are basically short “talk radio”-style programs you can listen to whenever you want) – I listen to a number of podcasts and I like to be able to access them anywhere.

On my Mac (and on Windows, too), I use iTunes for this. It’s incredibly easy to just browse the podcasts available on iTunes, pick the ones you want, and iTunes will just download them for you so you can listen to them as you please. On Linux, I use Juice for much the same effect, though it’s a bit more difficult. I usually find interesting podcasts on my Mac, then subscribe to them later using Juice. This lets me listen to the podcasts I enjoy wherever I am.

Skype
http://www.skype.com/

I use Skype for both voice chatting (i.e., telephone calls) and video conferences with friends and family on both my Mac and my laptop. You can do this for free to other Skype users or make unlimited calls to phone numbers in the US and Canada (plus an hour’s worth of international calls) for just $2.95 a month. Videoconferencing works like a charm with Skype, which has been essential for some of my work-related opportunities, plus it’s fun to talk to family using it so they can see the kids and so on. It costs nothing if you do this with other Skype users – talk about a good deal!

I waxed ecstatic about Skype in the past – while it hasn’t replaced our phone service as of yet, I use it much more than our normal phone service at this point.

Tweetdeck
http://www.tweetdeck.com/

I’m a Twitter addict. I don’t tweet that much myself, but I follow a small handful of people and love to dive into random conversations on topics that interest me. You can do Twitter via their website, but I often find it cumbersome to do this kind of thing, plus it’s easy to get massively overloaded with people who update too much.

So, I’ve been trying out Twitter clients that help with those problems, and the best one I’ve found (by far) is Tweetdeck. The big feature is “grouping” – I can define my own groups of people on Twitter and just pay attention to that group, like “Personal Friends” or “Interesting Thinkers” or “Fellow Money Bloggers.” This lets me follow certain sets of people closely without getting flooded with minutiae too much. I can also easily search Twitter for topics of interest, browse through conversations on those topics, and dig into conversations to my heart’s content. Yep, I’m a Twitter addict – and Tweetdeck makes it very easy to do what I like.

OpenOffice
http://www.openoffice.org/

Quite often, I need to edit and share documents with friends. I also use spreadsheets to keep track of my money, plus I use presentation software as I begin to engage in speaking opportunities. For most people, this means ponying up for Microsoft Office, but OpenOffice does all that for free – and it works almost identically on my Mac and on Linux (and on my parents’ PC).

OpenOffice includes document creation, spreadsheets, presentations, databases, basic drawing tools, and lots of other little bits – and it doesn’t cost a penny.

Audacity
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

I’ve been experimenting with podcast recording for a while now, trying to figure out what I want to do and how I want to do it. At times, I’ve recorded at my desk and on my laptop using a USB microphone. In both cases, I’ve found that Audacity does everything I need to do – I can edit pieces together, add music snippets, move pieces around, record from the mic, and it all just works.

I tried using GarageBand on my Mac, but it often felt like using an elephant gun when a peashooter would do the trick. Other solutions I tried crashed or had stability issues. Audacity just does the trick whether I’m at home or on the road.

Freemind
http://freemind.sourceforge.net/

What is Freemind? Freemind is basically a workspace where you can jot down little pieces of ideas, connect them together, and organize them really easily. I use this whenever I’m trying to figure out how to organize my ideas for a complex post. Where it is really shining right now, though (and I’m using it a lot lately), is for putting together the basic framework for my next book. I can just take little ideas (keywords or phrases) and move them around in groupings and connections however I wish.

Freemind makes all of this easy. If you’re trying to put together a complex idea, it can be truly invaluable. Better yet, it works on tons of different platforms – I use it on both of my machines and I’ve used it on PCs in the past. If you do creative work or are dealing with a large project, give it a shot.

BOINC
http://boinc.berkeley.edu/

BOINC? BOINC doesn’t really do anything, but it runs more than any other program on both of my computers. To put it simply, BOINC takes your unused computer cycles and contributes them to large research projects, like SETI@home or protein folding. For example, when I’m working, I’m usually not using much of my computer’s processing power – text editing doesn’t really eat up the processor, you know. So I keep BOINC running, and it uses those wasted resources and puts them toward a good cause. It’s a way to be charitable with something you would otherwise completely waste. I run it constantly on my Mac and (when I think of it) on my laptop when it’s plugged into a wall socket.

BOINC keeps track of your progress and lets you see your contributions to whatever projects you choose (I usually contribute to SETI@home). It’s kind of fun to look at the data I’ve helped to analyze and realize that I’m helping a large scientific project go forward – and it only costs me a few pennies in electricity.

One final note… one free application I used almost constantly for Windows was Digsby. It allowed me to keep track of updates on every instant messaging service I use, most of the social networking websites (like Facebook and Twitter), and emails, too. Unfortunately, it’s not yet available for Mac and Linux, so I’m still waiting… but for all you Windows users, this one’s great.

Lately, my lust for gadgets has been going utterly crazy. I want one of those nifty netbooks. For those unaware, a netbook is a very small laptop (think a nine inch screen or so) that focuses on efficient energy use rather than power. For the most part, these devices are mostly just designed to run a web browser and an email program very well – they’re intended to be small enough to fit in a purse or even in a pocket, but enable you to do email and/or browse the web anywhere you can get a Wi-Fi signal (or, in the event you have mobile broadband, pretty much anywhere).

Since I have a nice desktop machine in my office and I can do quick web browsing and reading of email on my iPod Touch (a wonderful Christmas gift, I must say), a netbook isn’t really a need at all. It would just be convenient, enabling to do some things out of the house that I couldn’t otherwise do.

At the same time, I had an old laptop in my closet. It’s several years old and it really struggles running Windows Vista – I had thought about downgrading it to Windows XP, but I never really bothered because of another problem. The laptop’s battery was completely shot. It would last roughly thirty seconds on battery before simply powering down abruptly.

What I would like to have is a device with a few hours of battery life that starts up quickly and allows me to check my email and a few key sites on the road. Most of all, I’d like to find the cheapest route to get from what I have to where I want to be.

So I put on my frugal thinking cap and got to work.

Fixing the Power Problem
The first step was to solve the power issue – and the way to solve that was to find a new battery for the laptop. A replacement battery from Dell costs $140 – ouch.

Luckily, laptop batteries are a perfect item to shop around for online, as many different vendors sell laptop batteries at widely varying prices. A minute worth of Google searching found a compatible battery for $56.88 and talking to a few parts vendors on eBay by email found another one for $50 including shipping. When you need parts, ask around.

Replacing the battery is trivial – simply unlock the old one, pop it out, and pop in the new one. Most reasonably new laptops follow the same procedure – incredibly easy.

Fixing the Software Problem
This leaves me with the second problem – how can I make this old laptop do the things I want with any degree of speediness? I started up the laptop and it took six and a half minutes from hitting the power button until I was ready to actually do anything.

The easiest option would be to just downgrade the laptop to an earlier version of Windows, but this requires me to have a copy of an earlier version of Windows easily available. Also, older versions of Windows eventually stop being supported with updates, making them a security risk.

Instead, I went in a different direction for a solution.

I simply wiped the entire hard drive on the old laptop and installed Ubuntu on it. Ubuntu is a very user-friendly flavor of Linux that is arguably easier to install than Windows and runs very well on older hardware (not ancient hardware, just older hardware). All I had to do was burn an Ubuntu CD on my desktop machine, install it on the laptop, plug in my network cable on the laptop, and have Ubuntu update itself to all of the latest software and drivers. Boom – everything works like a charm, from the sound to the wireless. It took me about two hours, all told, and most of that time was simply waiting, meaning I walked away and did other things while things got set up.

Best of all, every single significant feature I wanted for my netbook is present here: quick to start up, simple web browsing and email access, the ability to do some writing and a bit of number crunching in a pinch – it’s all right there.

My total cost for all of this was about $60.

How Can I Use This Information?
You’re probably wondering how this is useful to you at all. It’s simple – you can basically do the same exact thing if you just want a simple laptop for checking email and surfing the web. For those tasks, you can easily get away with an older laptop.

So how do you get an older laptop? The easiest way is to simply ask around in your community. If you have a local computer store, stop in and see what they have that’s older (by older, I would recommend a laptop that’s not more than five or six years old and has wireless capability). You can also do some shopping online, but shopping for used computer hardware online is definitely a caveat emptor process.

My recommended method, though, would be to ask around your social network and see if anyone has an older laptop that they’re not using that they’d be willing to sell for cheap or trade. Start with anyone you know who has used a laptop over the last few years. You’ll be surprised how many people have old computer equipment that they’re happy to offload for a pittance.

You’ll probably need to find a new battery for that laptop, so before you invest much money, find out the model number and make sure you can get a battery online for it.

Once you have those pieces, though, it’s usually quite easy to replace the battery and install Ubuntu on it, and once you have that, you have a wonderfully functional laptop that’s perfect for checking email and surfing the web – and it won’t cost you too much at all.

About two years ago, I wrote a very popular piece for The Simple Dollar called 30 useful Pieces Of Free (and Open) Software for Windows. In it, I talked about how I had a new Dell laptop and that I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on additional software for it, so I went hunting. I sought out open source software so that I knew it would be not only free, but the code would be peer-reviewed and it wouldn’t have any bugs or malicious elements in it. And, eventually, I found thirty pieces of software that really met my needs.

Eventually, though, I switched to using a Mac. And, just as with my PC, I wanted to find a lot of open source software to meet my basic computing needs. I didn’t want to shell out the big bucks for Office or other such expensive pieces of software – I’d already spent enough. So I went hunting.

What follows is a list of twenty five pieces of software that are the cream of the crop of open source software for Macs. Not only is every piece of it free, many of them directly replace expensive software packages.

1. Firefox
http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
Replaces Internet Explorer and Safari
Safari is a very solid web browser out of the box, but it’s not nearly as extensible or useful as Firefox. With add-ons like Book Burro, FareFirst, and Package Mapping, plus the speed and reliability I’ve come to expect, Firefox is the only web browser for me.

2. Quicksilver
http://www.blacktree.com/
Unique but useful (productivity)
Quicksilver lets you set almost anything you can imagine in Mac OS as a keyboard shortcut. This allows me to do things like start iTunes and have it auto-play a specific podcast with a specific keyboard shortcut (I have one that auto-plays This American Life, for example). It’s a bit complicated at first, but once you get used to it, it makes you feel massively productive and it becomes almost an essential part of the OS.

3. Thunderbird
http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird/
Replaces Mail
For most purposes, the default Mac OS Mail does the trick, but I find Thunderbird essential because it allows me features like auto-replying to certain kinds of messages and far better IMAP support, and it’s faster, too. Even better – it works identically both on my PC and on my Mac.

4. Sunbird
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird/
Replaces iCal
I like iCal, but Mozilla Sunbird does one thing that iCal doesn’t – two-way syncing with Google Calendar. When I’m traveling, I’ll use Google Calendar at any terminal I’m at to print out tomorrow’s schedule, make little changes, and so on. When I get home, it’s just a click of a button and it all syncs up with Sunbird. That’s an amazing feature for me and it makes Sunbird far superior to iCal.

5. AbiWord
http://www.abisource.com/download/
Replaces Microsoft Word
This is, by far, the best open source word processor for Macs. It functionally replaces Microsoft Word for almost every purpose I’ve come across and has a fast and slick interface to boot. This is the word processing program I used to write my book with, in fact.

6. OpenOffice
http://www.openoffice.org/
Replaces Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint
Need to make spreadsheets or presentations on your Mac? OpenOffice provides the tools you need for that (as well as word processing, but I prefer AbiWord for that). I often use OpenOffice Spreadsheet for the number calculations you see on The Simple Dollar, as well as using it for tracking my net worth (as in this tutorial I wrote).

7. Seashore
http://seashore.sourceforge.net/
Replaces (for most uses) Adobe Photoshop
This is a fairly simple image editor that takes care of most of the basic uses of Photoshop and is simple enough for most users to pick up. This is a great solution for those who want to do simple image manipulation but don’t want to shell out the big bucks for Photoshop.

8. Scribus
http://www.scribus.net/
Replaces Adobe Pagemaker (desktop publishing)
I’m actually elbow-deep in Scribus right now as I work on a special side project. It’s a very powerful desktop publishing program, giving you tons of freedom to lay out pages however you like. Another use: I’m thinking about making a family newsletter to ship out in the Christmas cards this year.

9. Adium
http://adiumx.com/
Replaces iChat
iChat is pretty slick, allowing me to chat in AIM and GTalk at the same time, but what about all of the other chatting protocols out there. Adium allows you to be on YahooIM, Windows Messenger, AIM, ICQ, and several other messaging services at the same time with the same program.

10. OneButton FTP
http://onebutton.org/
Replaces “command line” FTP
On occasion, I need to FTP some files from one place to another (usually from one computer to another within our home network, when I’m too lazy to use a memory stick). OneButton FTP does the job in the simplest and easiest way possible – much easier than the default “command line” FTP.

11. Audacity
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Replaces/supplements GarageBand
Need to make audio recordings of your own? All you need is a microphone of some sort and Audacity – and you can create podcasts, record music, or pretty much anything else you can imagine. I’ve actually considered using it to read aloud some bedtime stories for my kids in advance of any traveling I might do.

12. Cashbox
http://www.fadingred.org/cashbox/
Replaces Quicken
This is a very nice personal finance data manager for Mac OS. It doesn’t have quite all the bells and whistles of Quicken, but it provides a strong feature set and a huge number of different views of your personal finance state. If you’re a Quicken fan but don’t want to drop the cash for a Mac version, look into this one.

13. Vidalia
http://www.vidalia-project.net/
Unique but useful (privacy)
Many people are concerned about online privacy and don’t want their IP address shared with web sites that they visit or file servers that they access. Vidalia easily allows you to use proxy servers for your accessing needs, enabling you to disguise your computer on the internet.

14. Books
http://books.aetherial.net/wordpress/
Unique but useful (book cataloguing)
This one’s just for fun, but I’ve found it very useful. It allows you to catalogue all of your books, create reports, and so forth. I’ve been using it heavily in conjunction with PaperBackSwap to help me as I read through a pretty big pile of classic literature.

15. Bean
http://www.bean-osx.com/
Replaces TextEdit
I use this software for the editing of virtually every post that appears on The Simple Dollar. It’s a slick little editor with features like automatic word counting that really help when you’re trying to keep some semblance of control on the length of your articles.

16. GanttProject
http://ganttproject.biz/
Replaces Microsoft Project
This is an excellent tool if you’re involved in the management of large projects with many staff members, particularly if budgeting is tight (as Project can be expensive). One of my closest friends uses this for mission-critical projects in the workplace.

17. Nvu/BlueGriffon
Now: http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/15699
Soon: http://bluegriffon.org/
Replaces Dreamweaver (HTML editing)
I prefer coding my HTML by hand, but many people prefer the aid of a tool to help them with layout, and that’s what these provide. Nvu is a bit outdated but is still very useful – the creator has moved on to a new project, called BlueGriffon, which should be available soon.

18. Blender
http://www.blender.org/download/get-blender/
Unique but useful (3D graphics creation)
Blender is a magnificent tool if you like tinkering with 3-D graphics creation. It’s perhaps overkill for most people, but if you’re involved in graphic design at all, using and knowing Blender can be invaluable.

19. Colloquy
http://colloquy.info/
Unique but useful (IRC)
If you chat on IRC, Colloquy is essential software. For the uninitiated, IRC is a very large network of chatrooms on various specific topics, often developing their own culture. Colloquy is a wonderful solution for IRC chatters on Macs.

20. FreeMind
http://freemind.sourceforge.net/
Unique but useful (brainstorming)
Whenever I’m struggling to organize my thoughts and ideas, I open up FreeMind. Basically, it’s a tool that lets you toss out your thoughts in an unorganized structure, then build connections between them however you like. I often use it for posts where I have a collection of thoughts and research notes, but I haven’t really decided how to order them or tie them all together. It’s brilliant in any brainstorming setting.

21. Celestia
http://www.shatters.net/celestia/
Unique but useful (planetarium)
If you’re a space buff (like I am), Celestia is incredible software. It’s a great way to create star charts, help you identify good nights for viewing constellations and other stellar objects, and simply stumble around different views of the sky. I simply love looking at the night sky, and Celestia is a wonderful free companion for this hobby.

22. Transmission
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/19378
Unique but useful (file sharing)
Many people like to upload and swap their own files with other users, such as live recordings of concerts, recordings of their own performances, free application software, and so on. BitTorrent is one of the most popular protocols for doing this, and Transmission is easily the best of the open source Mac clients for swapping them.

23. MacLibre
http://www.maclibre.com/
Supplements Software Update
Many of these software packages are updated fairly regularly by their authors. MacLibre serves as something of a “Software Update” tool for these things, fetching updates for you and helping you to easily install them with just a click or two. It’s a great way of keeping up to date on software updates for open software on a Mac.

24. Aleph One
http://source.bungie.org/get/
Gaming
Like games like Quake and Half-Life? Aleph One is an excellent open source game in this vein, available for the Mac. The graphics are a bit on the simple side, but online play is quite slick and one can’t argue with the cost.

25. Battle for Wesnoth
http://www.wesnoth.org/
Gaming
The final choice on this list is a turn-based strategy game with a fantasy theme. Battle for Wesnoth presents you with a wide array of scenarios that require you to take turns moving pieces around the landscape, thinking about your moves, and engaging in skirmishes. This one ate up a lot of my hours a few years ago!

Most mornings, I tend to listen to a handful of podcasts while I write. I listen to a wide variety of things to keep informed, from tech podcasts and food podcasts to sports podcasts and personal development podcasts, but I keep quite a bit of time open to personal finance podcasts. They’re a great way to regularly expose yourself to personal fiance thoughts and ideas.

What’s A Podcast? How Can I Subscribe?
Most of you are probably already quite familiar with podcasts, but they might be a new thing for some of you, so let’s get everyone up to speed and on the same page on this.

What’s a podcast? A podcast is an audio recording you can download on your computer. Podcasts are much like radio programs (there are also a few video podcasts out there, which are like television programs, but I’m going to focus on audio-only podcasts) except that you control the station – you choose which programs you wish to subscribe to and your computer automatically downloads them whenever a new one comes out. Whenever you want to listen, you just choose which podcast you want to hear and you’re good to go. The name “podcast” comes from the fact that many people download podcasts to their iPods so they can listen to their preferred podcasts wherever they’re at.

How can I subscribe to a podcast? The easiest way for most people to subscribe is through Apple’s iTunes program. Just visit the iTunes Store and then choose “Podcasts” on the left hand menu. They have thousands upon thousands of podcasts listed there – just wander around and subscribe to a few. They’re all free. If you don’t like them, unsubscribe – you’re completely in control.

Seven Money Podcasts I Listen To
I am currently subscribed to seven podcasts that could be described as “money podcasts.”

Planet Money
http://podcast.com/show/89739/
This is probably my favorite podcast out there on money topics. It’s produced by NPR and comes out once or twice every weekday and is between twenty or thirty minutes in length. I listen to roughly 80% of new episodes. For the most part, it focuses on financial current events, but they do a very good job of connecting things like, say, Iceland’s economic crisis to your personal financial situation.

Money Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for a Richer Life
http://podcast.com/show/19720/
This one comes out roughly each week (it’s usually weekly, but occasionally has a “special edition”) and is about seven minutes in length. It’s very “tip” oriented – it usually describes how to do something specific related to your money, such as setting up a 529 for college savings or how to allocate your assets or what exactly a recession is.

Marketplace
http://podcast.com/show/5270/
Marketplace is produced by American Public Media and is just a replay of their daily Marketplace radio program that appears on NPR in the afternoons. It’s about 29 minutes in length and comes out once every weekday. It tends to focus more on economic issues than personal finance, but it often crosses over into focusing on your pocketbook.

Marketplace Money
http://podcast.com/show/95918/
This is very similar to Marketplace, except it has a bit stronger focus on personal finance. It also comes out just weekly, but it’s about 52 minutes in length. They tend to go a bit more in depth with specific stories, which can be good sometimes, but on occasion results in stories that drone on and on.

Your Money Matters
http://podcast.com/show/3920/
This one’s produced by the Wall Street Journal, comes out daily, and is about five minutes in length. It often seems like a very short version of Marketplace Money – a nice little bit of money news. I find it just a bit drier than Marketplace, but it’s still well worth a daily listen.

Vanguard: Plain Talk on Investing
http://podcast.com/show/19731/
This podcast (produced by the Vanguard mutual fund company) comes out roughly monthly and is about ten minutes in length. It mostly focuses on specific advice for investments for different goals – retirement, college, what kind of IRA to choose, and so on. It’s good, solid, useful advice.

Kiplinger’s Personal Finance
http://podcast.com/show/17281/
This one comes out very irregularly, though it averages about twice a month. It’s also often larded down with a lot of “game show” noises. It also varies a lot in length, from two minutes to twenty minutes. So what’s good about it? Once you strip away that stuff, there’s usually some very strong information in here. It just doesn’t pop up as new all that often.

Will There Ever Be A Simple Dollar Podcast?
I’ve thought many times about creating my own podcast or video series. If I did one, it would be similar in vein to the Money Girl series – short episodes that focus on a single topic with realistic, useful tips.

Two things hold me back from jumping on board. First, I don’t have the best radio voice. I don’t know how to describe it, but it doesn’t sound all that great in recordings. Second, I don’t believe a podcast would provide appropriate value for my time. I currently feel like I’m much more likely to reach people with a well-written Simple Dollar post than I ever would with a podcast.

If the right situation came along, I’d be willing to try it, but for now, it’s one of those “back burner” ideas.

I get five or so requests a week from people who want a PC at home that they can surf the web and check email from. Most of them don’t want to do anything much more complicated than watching YouTube videos. I usually give them all the same recipe for doing this on the cheap, and thus I thought it’d be worthwhile to present it to all of my readers.

If you want this kind of system, here’s how you can get it for usually less than $100.

Step 1: Get the Basic Hardware You’ll Need
Start off by hitting the yard sales and your social network for the basic pieces. What you’re looking for are the basic components of an old PC. You’ll need a monitor, the computer box itself (which should include a CD drive or – preferably – a drive that can read DVDs, too), a keyboard, a mouse, and perhaps some speakers. Many people upgrade their computers on a regular basis, tossing out old monitors that still work or other peripherals they don’t need, so just ask around.

You won’t need much of a computer at all – anything above 1 gigahertz or with more than 384 megabytes of memory will do. I purchased a computer seven years ago with substantially more hardware than that, so it should be easy to find without much expense at all.

Don’t know much about computer specifics? Your best bet is to simply get ahold of the person you know with the most computer knowledge and tell them that you’re looking for the pieces for a very low-end PC.

If you feel more comfortable, you can simply check out Dell or your local superstore and get the least expensive computer that they sell – this way, you can be sure the hardware is new, at least, though you’ll likely spend $200-400 in this case. Once you get it home, though, you should ignore the version of Windows that comes with it and continue below, because on a low-end system like that, Windows will run quite slowly – there is a better way.

This is the only part that will cost you any money at all. The remaining steps won’t cost you a dime.

Step 2: Get the Basic Software You’ll Need
Don’t just install Windows, as Windows will run extremely poorly on that old of a system (and it’s expensive, too). Instead, get a user-friendly version of Linux called Ubuntu. If you have a friend that can burn a few CDs for you, you can download it for free and have your friend make CDs of it. Otherwise, you can request that they mail you a CD of it for free. The free CD by mail takes quite a while, so you might want to get on it if you want to order one.

Don’t let the unknown make you fearful – Ubuntu is easy to use. I would happily install Ubuntu on the computer of even the biggest computer novice without much worry. In fact, Ubuntu is currently running on one of my computers here at home – the only desktop PC in our home is running Ubuntu, not Windows.

When you’ve put together that basic system (plugged the mouse, keyboard, monitor, and speakers into the central unit, then plugged the central unit and monitor into the wall), just put the CD into the CD drive, then power it up. The installation will walk you through the steps – easy as pie.

Remember, even if you have difficulty getting Ubuntu to work, you haven’t invested any money in it at all, so you can always back out and try using something else with no worries.

Once you’re going with it, there’s extensive online help that addresses just about every question you might possibly have on your home computer. If you’re moving to this from Windows, here’s an excellent guide for making that transition, including bringing over all of your web bookmarks, your email settings, and so on. You will probably also want to set things up to allow yourself to play restricted media, like DVDs, mp3 files, and so forth.

Step 3: Get the Other Software You’ll Need
Ubuntu comes with most of the software you need – Firefox for browsing the web, Thunderbird for email, and lots of other software packages. You may also be interested in getting OpenOffice (free word processing, spreadsheets, and so on) and KMyMoney (free money management software, like Quicken).

In fact, the sole reason I haven’t switched to Ubuntu myself is the lack of a good replacement for Adobe Photoshop. There are several applications which attempt to mimic it (and do a solid job), but I use Photoshop for so many purposes that until they release a Linux version, I’m going to be sticking with the Mac/PC world. For almost everyone else, this isn’t really an issue, but I thought I’d clarify my biggest reason for not jumping on board.

In short, if you just want a very basic home PC to check email and browse the web, this is the cheapest way to get one. You can get a fully-functional, visually appealing, and rather speedy home computer for just the cost of a handful of component parts – most of which you can find very cheaply if you hunt around and tap your social network a bit.

A few days ago, I made an offhand reference to using Skype to nearly eliminate the cost of a land line phone at home. A surprisingly large number of readers were curious about this and wrote in with interesting questions of all kinds, so I thought I’d walk through what Skype is, how we use it, and why it might work for you in some situations but not in others.

What is Skype?
Skype is a service that allows you to use your computer and high-speed internet connection at home to place telephone calls anywhere in the world for a very cheap price. The plan we’re testing, for example, allows us to make unlimited calls within the United States and Canada (both land line and mobile phones) and an hour’s worth of international calls each month for $2.95, plus unlimited free calls to anyone with a Skype account and their computer turned on. If you want to buy an entire year’s worth, you can get a year’s worth of unlimited free long distance in the United States and Canada for $14.95.

It’s not a scam, it’s completely legit. Skype just uses the internet instead of the telephone system to send phone calls.

Wow! Are there any drawbacks?
There are several, and their severity depends on your situation. For us, they’re pretty minor.

First, this service only allows you to make calls out. For calls in, you have to pay for an additional service, called SkypeIn, that gives you a phone number. Calls to that phone number will pop up on your computer like an instant messenger window – you just click answer and you’re good to go.

Second, you need a microphone of some sort to hear your speaking. I originally used an old Bluetooth headset (headphones with a voice mic that connected easily to my computer), then later I started using a webcam for this purpose. The point is you need some sort of microphone to pick up what you’re speaking and speakers or headphones to play it back to you. Yes, this would mean you’d sit at your computer and carry on a conversation near it without an actual telephone. If you want to actually use a telephone-like device, they make those as well, but there’s an additional cost. We have one and it works well throughout our house – it pretty much functions like a normal telephone.

Third, the voice quality is almost always great, but sometimes breaks up. It depends entirely on the quality of your internet connection. I have never had a call break up at all, but others with low-speed connections or poor internet providers.

So what would be a good setup to replace my home phone?
First, you need a high-quality internet connection. If you can’t just get internet without phone in your area, then Skype won’t really benefit you unless you’re making a lot of long distance calls and would just use this to save on long distance. If you can get internet without phone, that’s an even bigger bonus for using Skype – you save money automatically each month. Your internet connection must be a fairly high quality one, though, or else calls will be choppy. One way to try it out is to download Skype and play with the free service to see if it works for you.

Second, you need a method to speak and receive the voice data from Skype. This means either a microphone or webcam and computer speakers or headphones or a wireless Skype phone (like this one). Hopefully, you already have at least one of these options.

Third, you actually need the Skype program and an account there – it’s a lot like instant messenger, so if you can use your instant messenger program, Skype’s not hard to figure out. It’s auto-detected every device I’ve tried to use with it without skipping a beat – I just ran Skype and it identified the items.

Fourth, unless you have a very expensive Skype-only telephone, Skype requires your computer to be on and connected to the internet. That means there is an energy cost. You can mitigate this by using some clever tactics to reduce home computer energy use, but if your computer’s not on, you can’t receive or make calls. That’s a varying-level drawback depending on your lifestyle.

If all of these requirements fit you, Skype can save you quite a bit of money even just on long distance charges or minutes on your cell phone. If you’re around the house and have a strong internet connection, it’s essentially unlimited long distance to the United States and Canada for $14.95 a year – that’s a great bargain.

Are you using it?
Yes, indeed. My wife and I have started using it a lot at home. I’m sold and am ready to drop our land line to use only Skype, but my wife isn’t quite there yet, mostly because it seems like such a strange concept and she wants a longer test period – plus, she’s not used it nearly as much as I have. My calculation is that this drop will save us about $45 a month when we actually go forward with it, which I believe is just a matter of time until my wife is comfortable enough with it (I’m letting her make the call entirely herself, based on her own judgement – she knows I’m ready to switch, so we’ll switch when she’s ready).

Skype is an option well worth considering, especially if you’re a heavy phone user. Each situation is different, but if you have the things necessary (most importantly, a high speed connection at home), you can eliminate a land line and/or save a lot of minutes on your cell phone package by using Skype.