by Joe Makintosh

Created on: April 13, 2009   Last Updated: April 20, 2009

Anything to do with computers are expensive. The actual computer, Internet connection, the Operating System and so forth. It's not worth the money really, as all the majority of people want to do is get online, word process items for work and email. This is where Open Source comes in.

"What is open source?" I hear you say? All pieces of software (the programs on your computer, like Internet Explorer or Microsoft Word) are made using code like Perl, C++, Python etc. You don't need to know what these are to understand and use Open Source, as all it is is that this code is free for anyone to download, edit or redistribute, unlike a lot of programs that keep the code close to themselves (this is either Freeware or the stuff you pay for.)

Open Source is a movement in the world of computers. A lot of users are now switching to Open Source for a number of reasons.

1. Easier support, as the community centred around that program know a lot about the working of the software.

2. Modifications. A lot of tech-savvy users like to edit the coding to make the open source software better or more suited to them. It is easier to make add-ons for open source programs (a good example of this is Mozilla Firefox's add-ons database.)

3. Cost. In these hard economic times people would rather put their money towards food and bills rather than 400 programs just to edit holiday snaps, so Open Source is a real money saver.

WEB BROWSERS

A web browser is... well... something that allows a person to browse the Internet (or "web") easily. The "big three" of the Web Browsers are: Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Opera. Mozilla Firefox is open source and regarded as the best amongst the three by the majority. Other good alternatives are:

1) Flock (Built on the same interface as Firefox called "Gecko.") is built to be able to do a lot of things inside the browser like upload photos to Flickr, update the user's blog with a full text editor, easy access to news using RSS Feeds (Really Simple Syndication Feeds. It lets the user access news, pod-casts or anything with RSS feeds without having to navigate to the website) and more.

2) KMeleon (Also built on the Gecko Interface.) It is designed to be quick and easy to use.

3) Google Chrome, Google's open source browser is often regarded as going to take over Firefox eventually.

EMAIL

Electronic Mail, or Email is something that pretty much everyone with an Internet connection uses. It allows users to send messages to other people easily. In the old days Emails

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