Dweebs On Duty Tech Talk 2 - Ipad [58:45m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Today we talked about:

Topics

Data Backups:

http://www.dweebsonduty.com/blog/where-is-your-data

Legal Programs:

http://www.dweebsonduty.com/blog/the-importance-of-having-legal-software

Ipad:

http://www.dweebsonduty.com/blog/ipad-or-ifail

Microsoft Bridge:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/03/31/bridge.microsoft/

Sites

http://www.howtobeatupanything.com/

http://www.textsfromlastnight.com/

http://www.funnyordie.com/

http://www.buzzfeed.com/

http://appshopper.com/

http://www.woot.com

http://www.hulu.com

Programs:

DVDFab6 – For Ripping DVDs

Youtube Downloader – Like it says

Microsoft Security Essentials – Free Antivirus by Microsoft

Vmware Fusion – Run Windows on A Mac

Do you have a question that you would like us to answer on the next show?
Call (734) 344-4626 leave us a message.

While working on some computers this past week, we ran into some issues where our customers had gotten software that was not purchased. It would be unfair to lecture them on the wrongs of having illegitimate copies of Office or Windows because many times they get it from someone and do not know that it was not legally purchased. Using pirated software is, in fact, illegal and if you are charged with a criminal violation, the fine is up to $250,000 per title infringed and up to five years imprisonment.

With that being said, you probably have a better chance of winning the lottery than you do of getting caught using a bad copy of Windows. There is more to the issue than the moral and legal problems that come with using pirated software. The problem is that you can not depend on your software being there tomorrow.

What happens is that your computer usually runs automatic updates, these updates check weather or not your software has the proper licenses. If you do have the proper rights to use the software, the update installs no problem. If not you are looking at the strong possibility that your software will become unusable.

In the case of Windows being a hacked version, you will get a “This copy of windows is not genuine” tag in the lower right hand corner of your screen and it will not go away until you put in a valid Windows Key.
In The case of Office being illegal, you will just get an annoying pop up asking you to activate office. If you do not have a valid key you will not be able to use office anymore and then all of your files that you made with office will be useless. If this happens to you, head over to openoffice.org and download open office. This program will read most of your Office docs.

So the main reason you want to have legitimate copies of your software is that one day the software that you depend on can be rendered useless. Below are some free alternatives to office and windows.

Alternatives to office:
Open Office
Google Docs

Alternative to Windows
Linux – Ubuntu

Update:

Here is another post that I wrote that lists some more free and open source alternatives to popular software titles: http://www.dweebsonduty.com/blog/open-source-and-free-alternatives