Background

I caught the computer bug over 30 years ago, first as a hobbyist with the Commodore VIC-20 then-C64, via Sinclair-ZX Spectrum and Amstrad to early IBM PC and clones. Then my hobby spilled over into work, using my PC for stuff that the monolithic IT department seemed unable or unwilling to provide. Word Processing, Spreadsheets and Databases came to mean Microsoft Office, which has been my computing mainstay ever since.

Providing IT support in a small advertising and design agency meant sourcing, setting up and servicing Apple Macs for the studio upstairs, and Windows machines for sales and admin downstairs. QuarkXpress then Adobe InDesign for desktop publishing, were followed by DreamWeaver and Flash for web work on the Macs. Helping others with their first steps into computing with MS Office and providing usable databases for record keeping kept me pretty busy.

All of those programmes were far from free, but since retiring and wanting to keep my hand in, I have increasingly wanted to spend my time rather than money. That means finding, learning and using a host of free (or nearly free) stuff for my hobbies of computing, language learning, music, photography and reading.

Now I thought the time has come to review and share what I have learned the hard way, and maybe help others save time and money – hence this site.