That Technology Magazine

From reading ScrappyUntechie, you’ve figured out a few things about how my thought process works:

(1) While I don’t mind buying software that is worth the money, I am also very willing to look at established open source (and FREE) alternatives. Money spent on software can’t be invested in other areas of your small business.

(2) I do my best to avoid software - or any technology - that is cutting edge or challenging to learn. The day is too short for reading manuals and learning lingo.

(3) If I need software to accomplish something, I’m very willing to find it and buy it instead of spending hours trying to fix my problem some other imaginary way. Time spent avoiding a software purchase is not what an entrepreneur should be doing.

(4) I’m not an expert on photos, graphics, or just about anything web or computer related. Given my interest in learning some of everything, I’ll probably avoid having to become an expert in anything.

Where is all this rambling going? I find myself having to edit graphics and photos once in a while - nothing too fancy. With all the various formats, sizes, and uses of images… how can I be sure that I’ll be able to open, edit, and convert a file quickly and effectively?

The “by-the-book” answer is to purchase a copy of Adobe Illustrator with its list price running into the hundreds of dollars. Knowing that I’m not a heavy user of graphics software led me to look around a bit.

I think I hit the jackpot when I downloaded a 15-day trial of Xara Xtreme. In the end, I even shelled out the $79 to buy the licensed version of the software. I’m sure that I use 10 percent of its capabilities. However, the bottom line is that I have been able to easily open, edit, and convert every image file that I have had to manipulate. I have saved an enormous amount of time and have the peace of mind that I can do what I need to do. And, as you can guess, it’s easy to use.

(If you’re a Linux and not a Windows user, note that Xara for Linux is open source and FREE.)

Next time you get stuck doing something with graphics or photos that you need to edit or convert, download the trial version. Who knows… you may end up buying the license after you see how powerful and easy to use it is.

For those of you out there who are a graphics or photo whiz, I’d appreciate your comments on how Xara Xtreme compares to what you use.

All is well.

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This entry was posted on Friday, March 30th, 2007 at 5:20 pm and is filed under entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, small business, software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.