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Posted Feb. 15, 2013

Essential Free Software for Postgraduate Students

As a postgraduate student you should be scrambling to nab whatever free stuff you can get your hands on.

Whether you're looking for free software to help you make a top notch Facebook profile pic, or you simply need something that will aid you in writing your postgraduate dissertation , you should be able to find something in this list that will get the job done!

Calling all cash-strapped students - you're gonna love this free software...

Skype If you haven’t heard of  Skype by now I am seriously not sure how you've managed to make  it to postgraduate status. If you have heard of it but are not using it yet, you are lazy and have way too much money to burn on phone bills. Skype is a student’s dream piece of software as it allows you to contact your friends, family, and classmates for free! Only catch - they have to be on Skype too. You can even video call people from the other side of the world and it won't cost you a penny. Anyone who is particularly frugal may also like to know that you can save extra money by putting credit on your account so that you can call landlines and mobile numbers from Skype. Why would you want to do that? Because it only charges for a local call, even if you are calling someone in Australia.

OpenOffice.org The extremely talented and sly marketing team at Microsoft have generated a very profitable rumor over the last 10 years – that you can only make documents, spreadsheets, and slideshows using Microsoft Office. This is simply not true, and anyone who does not have money to burn on a copy of Microsoft Office for their computer or laptop will be delighted to know that OpenOffice has just about the same functionality as Microsoft but for the grand price of zero pounds. This means you could save upwards of £100 without your work suffer at all.

GIMP Apart from the fact that it has a very amusing name, GIMP will interest anyone looking for an easy way to edit their photos. It enables a whole host of picture-editing functions that most people end up paying an absolute bomb for when they purchase Adobe Photoshop. GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a solid program for those of you who have image manipulation requirements for your course, but do not want to fork out for a professional program. It is extremely useful for resizing, cropping, altering file types, text overlays, and many other picture functions that you might need for your assignments.

AVAST!

Literally the last thing that you want or can afford during you postgraduate degree is for your laptop to become overrun with viruses. It is only natural that after paying out huge sums of money for a new laptop that you don't want to shell out yet more money to ensure that it is protected. Thankfully there are some generous people out there who do not wish to see your prized possession suffer the wrath of a computer virus, and they are not charging a penny for their software.

AVAST!

is one such company, and they could save you a tidy sum. When you think about all the work, movies, music, programs and games on your computer that could perish under the wrath of a trojan, it has to be worth spending a small amount of time installing this free software to protect it.

Sync Toy There is nothing worse than spending endless hours working on an essay only to find that your computer has died and your work is not backed up anywhere! Thankfully disaster can be avoided with the use of the fantastic free tool  Sync Toy . This program automatically backs up your data so that you can access it again anytime. The program also lets you wirelessly share files between computers.

Just remember, every little helps! From studentships, bursaries and any other sources of  funding , to giveaways and freebies.

What's your favourite free software?
 

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