Considering the fact that Adobe wants $640 for a full version of Photoshop CS4, $353.99 for Dreamweaver CS4 and Microsoft wants $313 for Office 2007 it’s probably safe to assume that there’s a whole lot of people out there looking for cheaper (and legal) alternatives.

AlternativeTo.net is a website dedicated to helping users find better alternatives to popular apps. Pick your preferred platform (Windows, Mac, Linux and online) and license (commercial, free, open source etc) and you’re ready to go. No more hours of sifting through heaps of crappy alternatives.

(via computerlove)

So, the free-as-in-beer RC will include all the features available in the final product and will be functional until June 1st 2010. That gives you more than a year of free testing time with updates and everything. Sweet indeed.

I really, really hope PC Pro is correct here – a stunt like this could be what Microsoft needs to gain some goodwill. Windows 7 is getting some good buzz and this probably won’t hurt at allt. I’ll be the first in line to download it, can’t wait to get rid of Millenium err… Vista.

Article @ PC Pro

Update: They were right! The Windows 7 Release Candidate is now available for download here [microsoft.com].

(Via crunchgear)

Robert Curto has created WriteMonkey: a free full-screen text editor aiming to help those of us apt to get easily distracted. Just put everything else behind and write. No fancy fonts, no fancy colors (except the customizable foreground/background). Think of it as a fullscreen, old-school typewriter for modern people.

“For creative writing I prefer text editors over word processors. Less distraction. You don’t think about bold, italics or alignment. That’s for a second or even third stage. And the full screen editor is the best. It is your heart/mind and the empty screen. Everything comes from emptiness. This sort of software is called Zenware.”

Download it for free at WriteMonkey.com.

By the way, if you want a more generic app for the Mac to help you focus there’s always Enjoy The Silence by Frozen Heads Software, making sure everything behind your currently selected app is hidden in serene darkness.)

Just like with textures it’s pretty much impossible for any designer to find him- or herself with too many high quality and free icon sets. Finding those sets, on the other hand, can be quite a pain.

Here’s where sites like iconPot.com comes in. They’re collecting high quality icon sets that are completely free for both personal and commercial use – not even demanding back-links to the icon authors. Good stuff.