BRCS Freeware SIG: Opera Browser Setup for Slow Connections

The main topic at the April 28, 2011 Freeware SIG session was inspired by a posting on Lifehacker.com, as the internet connection where we meet is usually very slow.
As usual, the session started off with a short slide show presentation of the main topic, and then we branched off into other items of interest to those in attendance.

The notes and actual presentation regarding setting up and using the Opera browser for slow connections have been posted in LibreOffice/OpenOffice.org format, Microsoft Office (PowerPoint 2007 for the presentation), and PDF format in their corresponding folders at the BRCS Freeware SIG box.net site. http://www.box.net/shared/3933b4mnnl

After the completion of the main topic some others were discussed:

Question

Where can I find cartoons?

Answer

Don't know anywhere in specific, other than http://xkcd.com/ and http://geekandpoke.typepad.com/, both of which have appeared in this blog. The suggestion is to search in Google for them, and when you see ones you like bookmark the link and/or subscribe to the RSS feed if available. Also, if you see one in print, check and see if there is a link to the cartoonist's site and go there to check out the other cartoons by the same cartoonist.

Question

Is there a free equivalent to Microsoft Publisher? I have files in Publisher 97 format that I would like to open and work on.

Answer

There are some out there but I have no experience with them. I don't think that any of them will open Microsoft Publisher formatted files though, as it is a proprietary format.

The above question brought up a discussion of where to find alternatives to other applications. One suggestion was to Google "alternative to aaaaa", where aaaaa is replaced by the name of the application you are looking for an alternative to. Also the site alternativeTo http://alternativeto.net/ was explored as much as was possible with the connection available.

Kindle for PC, eBooks, Free Music

Someone mentioned eBooks and the Kindle device. I let them know that I had just been trying out Kindle for PC available from Amazon, a free download and free to use. Just go to http://goo.gl/nXMfW to check it out.

I demonstrated how it looks on my laptop and advised that there were plenty of free books to download, though not recent best sellers of course.

This led into where to get free music to listen to. I suggested jamendo http://www.jamendo.com/en/ and gave a brief demonstration of what was available in my favorite genre of jazz. There were over 300,000 tracks available at the time we visited the site.

All the music posted there is under Creative Commons http://creativecommons.org/ license, so is totally legal to download and listen to.