Carl’s Tech Toolbox

Below are tools and products I use regularly and recommend if you’re looking for:

Newegg’s Memory Finder: makes finding your RAM options easy.

Troubleshooting and diagnostic tools:

Office Substitutes:

PDF Alternatives:

Adobe Alternatives: it’s hard to beat the Creative Suite’s domination of the creative world, but here are a few tools to provide some of that functionality without the monstrous price tag.

  • Gimp:
    • Open Source equivalent of Photoshop.
  • Scribus:
    • Desktop Publishing

Here are some key general open-source/freeware products I recommend.

  • Firefox
  • Ubuntu:
    • the most user-friendly (in my opinion) of the Linux distributions.
  • Audacity:
    • open-source audio editing tool. Note: I have a few issues with the organization that manages it and wrote about it here

Want to rip DVDs to your PC?

  • Handbrake, the best tool I’ve found for this.

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