More often than not, people with disabilities live on a low fixed income and do not have the money to spend on computer software. Microsoft Office 2007 Pro will cost you about $390, Windows Vista Home Premium will run around $200. That’s a lot of extra cash that most of us do not have to spend. The good news is that there are alternatives to expensive Microsoft products.

I would say the biggest money saver would be an office package replacement. A free office suite that is very easy to use can be downloaded from http://www.openoffice.org/ . You can open and save documents in Microsoft Word format with this office package. Or if you wish, you can save your word document as a pdf. You can also open or create Excel Spreadsheets, and open or create presentations using the Power Point replacement within the Open Office suite. Best of all, the price is right… free!

The choice is up to you. You can shell out $390 for the privilege of using Microsoft, or you can get the same functional programming for free and spend the money you saved on some of life’s other necessities, like food and shelter.

If you like to work with photos and do image editing, there is free download called GIMP from http://www.gimp.org/ . It operates much the same way that Adobe PhotoShop or JASC PaintShop Pro works. You can crop images, adjust the contrast, layer images, etc. Cost for a typical photo editing application would normally be around $100, but GIMP will do the trick for free.

If you want to work with audio files and MP3’s there is Audacity from http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ or Power Sound Editor from http://www.free-sound-editor.com/ . With this software you can record, edit and save in several file formats such as wave or mp3. Both of these programs are available as a free download.

These are just a few application programs available for downloading. A couple of good sites to look for freeware or shareware are http://www.download.com/ , http://www.tucows.com/ and http://sourceforge.net/ . SourceForge.net hosts over 160,000 Open Source projects making it the world’s largest destination for Open Source software.

If you really want to try to be a freebie purist and you don’t want to pay for Windows Vista, try Linux. It’s totally free. There are many Linux distributions out there for a free download (Fedora Core (Red Hat), Ubuntu, FreeSpire, and Suse are the most common). Since the file size is quite large for a download, you will need a fast internet connection or know someone else who does. Most distributions of Linux come with Open Office, GIMP, and a large assortment of other free programs already packaged together with the install program.

WARNING – If you install Linux to your hard drive, you will be replacing your current operating system, so all files on the hard drive will be overwritten. There is a way to have both Windows and Linux on the same computer and there is a way to run Linux from a CD without overwriting the existing operating system. In any case, if you want to try Linux, please have someone install it for you that has had previous Linux installing experience. You may need help initially connecting your printer, scanner, or camera to the computer. In Rochester, you can look for help from the Linux Users Group of Rochester, LUGOR, http://www.lugor.org/ . A couple good websites to go to for information regarding Linux is http://www.linux.com/ and http://www.linux.org/ .

After Linux has been installed, you will find that pretty much anything you did under Windows, you will be able to do in Linux for free. You can write word documents, create spread sheets, surf the web, burn CDs, watch DVDs, edit pictures, etc. Also, once Linux is installed, you will not be forced to upgrade every two or three years, like you are with Microsoft Products. You can still download older versions of the operating system if you like for many distributions. However, it doesn’t pay to stay too far behind the times with your operating system. The nice thing is the upgrades are all free.

Bottom line is that if your funds are limited, where there is a will, there is a way, even in the computing world.