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By Steve AlexanderStar Tribune (Minneapolis)

I frequently recommend the free Malwarebytes security program to clean PCs infected with viruses or other malicious software. So I was puzzled when two readers said that it disabled their Google Chrome browsers.

The problem seems to be linked to a trial offer from Malwarebytes. And not everyone is affected.

Heres the gist: I recommend the free version of Malwarebytes (see tinyurl.com/jsdacdk), which doesnt have any adverse effect on Chrome. But the free version of Malwarebytes currently includes a 14-day free trial subscription to Malwarebytes 3.0 Premium, which normally costs $40 a year. Its this trial version thats automatically installed on your PC, and it includes an anti-exploit feature that sometimes prevents the Chrome browser from functioning.

What can you do? After you install the free version of Malwarebytes, you can opt out of the 14-day trial. To do so, go to settings, then click on my account. At the bottom of the page, click on deactivate premium trial. You will then have the basic free version of the program.

If you have already had Malwarebytes disable the Chrome browser, try adding Chrome to a list of programs that arent monitored for malicious activity. To do that, go to settings in Malwarebytes and select exclusions. At the bottom of the page, click add exclusion, and choose exclude an application that connects to the internet. Click next. Click browse, then at the left of Windows Explorer choose the C: disk. On the right of Explorer, double-click program files (x86). Double-click the Google folder, then the Chrome folder, then the Application folder, then the Chrome icon. Click OK.

If that doesnt work, try uninstalling Chrome, then using another browser to reinstall it. But this time use the alternate Chrome installer link at tinyurl.com/lmy49sl. This seems to eliminate the Chrome-Malwarebytes Premium software conflict for most people.

Q. I use Microsoft Office 2007, but I understand that technical support for it will end this year. Im not in a position to buy a new version of Office, so how risky will be it be to keep using Office 2007? Is there free software that I could use instead?

Robert Heston, Atascadero, Calif.

A. Microsoft will no longer provide security updates for Office 2007 after Oct. 10, which means your software will be at risk after that.

How risky will it be to continue using Office 2007? Attacks on individual Microsoft programs arent as common as attacks on Windows, but they do happen. Between January and April this year, hackers attacked a newly discovered vulnerability in Microsoft Word that affects all versions of Microsoft Office, including the newest one, Office 2016 (see tinyurl.com/nxmda47). Malware contained in emailed Word documents allowed other harmful software to be downloaded to the victims PCs. Microsoft is expected to issue a security patch to prevent the attack from happening again, so you will be safe. But after October, you wont have that assurance.

There are several free alternatives to Microsoft Office, including Google Apps, LibreOffice 5 and Apache OpenOffice 4 (see tinyurl.com/n4kmh6j).

Steve Alexander covers technology for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Readers may write to him at Tech Q&A, 425 Portland Ave. S., Minneapolis, Minn. 55488-0002; email: steve.j.alexander@gmail.com. Please include a full name, city and phone number.

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Editor's note: This article was originally published in November, 2013. It was last updated in April 2017.

Take a look at the next desktop PC or laptop you come across. Odds are good it won't be running an open-source operating system. Microsoft's closed-source Windows has by far the highest share of the PC client operating system market, followed in a distant second by Apple's macOS. Linux and other wholly open source operating systems have only a tiny market share.

It's not hard to see why. Despite the advances made by distributions such as Ubuntu, desktop Linux is still miles behind Windows and macOS in terms of the look, the feel and the slickness that most office workers have come to expect. The vast majority of companies simply aren't prepared to make office workers use an open source OS and most office workers aren't prepared to use them, either.

Even if you want to stick with a closed source operating system (or, the case of macOS, partially closed source), your business can still take advantage of a vast amount of open source software. The most attractive benefit of doing so: It's generally available to download and run for nothing. While support usually isn't available for such free software, it's frequently offered at an additional cost by the author or a third party. It may be included in a low-cost commercially licensed version as well.

Is it possible, then, to run a business entirely on software that can be downloaded for free? There certainly are many options that make it possible and many more that aren't included in this guide.

Very few companies using Microsoft Office actually require support from Microsoft, so using an open source alternative can make good financial sense. Open-source suites are compatible with Microsoft Office file formats such as .doc and .xls. Though their feature sets aren't quite as comprehensive as Office, that's unlikely to matter most people only use a fraction of the available features available anyway.

Here are four open source alternatives to Microsoft Office:

The following financial packages provide open source alternatives to commercial packages such as Quicken, Sage or QuickBooks:

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software is complex and can be very costly. But open source alternatives to SAP or Microsoft Dynamics do exist. Here are three:

Commercial customer relationship management (CRM) software is available from niche vendors, software as a service providers such as Salesforce.com and large software vendors such as Oracle. Here are three open source alternatives:

Private branch exchange (PBX) hardware used to be very expensive, but software-based PBX releases bring the price of PBXs down. The open source PBX market is dominated by Asterisk software.

Content management systems power websites and many of the world's largest sites use an cross-platform, open source CMS such as the following:

Ecommerce software packages, such as the three cross-platform products listed here, include everything from product presentation to shopping carts, checkout and payment processing.

Open source security tools If you havent been looking to open source to help address your security needs, youre missing out on a growing number of freely available tools for protecting your networks, hosts, and data.

Open source network management tools Can open source products deliver enterprise-grade results? To answer this question we tested four open source network monitoring products: OpenNMS, Pandora FMS, NetXMS and Zabbix.

Paul Rubens is a technology journalist based in England.

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Software company Geli released a new online program to streamline and optimize the design process for commercial storage.

Project developers can choose among various software systems for sketching out new installations, but they dont calculate the project specs with the same modeling the customer will eventually use to automate the system.

Its not that the tools now arent useful; they just don't provide a realistic expectation for what the product will likely do, said Andrew Tanner, VP of business development at Geli.

Tanner likens this to planning a solar array in New York using a weather file from Arizona: You can run an optimization and pick the theoretical best size, but it wont account for how the system will actually perform once its built.

Gelis ESyst program changes this by incorporating the companys operational parameters and commercially available system sizes into the design stage for storage systems with and without solar. During its beta period, ESyst drew 500 users who modeled more than 150 megawatt-hours of economically optimized storage installations.

This is the first time that an energy storage management software provider or automation platform has provided direct access...to their analytics for developers, Tanner said.

Several leading software companies also develop their own projects, like Green Charge Networks, Advanced Microgrid Solutions and Stem. They can size their systems internally based on how they will automate the completed project. That could create a competitive disadvantage for independent developers, integrated solution providers and the original equipment manufacturers trying to sell to them.

Source: Geli

Geli doesnt build its own projects; its goal is to make money by providing the software to automate other peoples batteries.

As such, the company is offering ESyst for free to interested parties -- you just have to request login credentials from the website -- in the hopes that people who use it to will then sign up as customers for the operational software.

That might not be a surefire revenue-generation strategy, but theres an argument to be made that the best way to attract customers is just to make yourself useful to them.

ESyst does that in two major ways: It makes storage design easier and more nuanced for all those developers who dont have a fancy in-house app, and it helps hardware providers get a better sense of the system size configurations that customers really need.

Someone could design a simple backup power or self-consumption project on ESyst and walk away. But, Tanner said, if customers move beyond those functions to more sophisticated value-stacking, theyll need Gelis software to realize the design potential.

The new software could also serve as a gateway to storage development for people who havent done it before.

We see this as a game-changer for solar developers who are looking to transition to being solar-plus-storage energy developers, Tanner said. It provides them with the ability to size the storage system and provide credible continuity from analytics to automation.

Well see if users agree. In the meantime, the data from the beta period offers some juicy insights into the current state of storage economics.

One striking takeaway: You dont need Self-Generation Incentive Program funds to make a project look good in California -- the ESyst algorithm found some projects could generate 15 percent ROI with the federal Investment Tax Credit alone.

That finding should still be validated with real-world projects that can make money sans SGIP. If that works out, this software could use data-driven economic modeling to counter the prevailing narrative that claims storage is still too expensive.

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Geli Makes Storage Project Design Software Available for Free ... - Greentech Media

Weve been talking a lot lately about the perks and perils of Microsoft Office, especially the program you begrudgingly used to write your college papers: Word. In what appears to be an unrelated move, Apple just made a whole host of productivity apps free. Get excited for Pages! (Borat voice: Not!)

But seriously, this is not bad news. Apples word processor (Pages), spreadsheet program (Numbers), and presentation software (Keynote) are all free to download for both macOS and iOS. GarageBand and iMovie are also free, if youre feeling creative. Many of these apps were free when they launched, and then Apple decided to charge people to use them. Now, theyre free again. Life comes at you fast.

Dont go starting a new word processing-based business quite yet, though. Apples productivity apps are not exactly awesome. While Keynote earned praise early on for being a slight improvement over Microsoft PowerPoint, Pages and Number seem like good ol college tries at replacements for MS Word and Excelattempts that fall well short of coaxing Microsoft loyalists over to the Apple family. Meanwhile, GarageBand and iMovie are perfectly acceptable alternatives to applications like Logic Pro and Final Cut Pro. However, theyre far from replacements if youre looking to do serious audio production or video editing.

But hey, who can argue with free software? Google Docs has done a great job of winning over users who want to do some basic Office-type stuff without asking them to pay for it. The open-source LibreOffice suite also does a better job at serving as a Microsoft Office replacement without forcing people to pay money for the software. We also know that not everybody gets to pick and choose which productivity apps they use at work, since many companies offer MS Office and only MS Office. So you might be stuck with that.

If youre not stuck, try Apples newly free again software. You might hate it, but its hard to hate something thats free.

[MacRumors]

Senior editor at Gizmodo.

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Interested users must register and be eligible to become a part of the Baselight Learning Programme to obtain a licence

Filmlight will release a free version of their Baselight grading software, called Baselight Student.

Baselight Student, available only on Mac OSX is a fully functional version of the Baselight software with GPU rendering that runs on any supported Mac platform. This includes support for an optional control surface, like FilmLights Slate panel, and even SDI monitoring.

The Student application is restricted to render out only h.264 movies or JPEG images. With no watermarking, this will allow the software to create academic-year projects within the limitation of the delivery formats. The software will retain conform capability, colour space handling, format editing and the ability to render both image sequences and movie files.

While the new application is free, interested parties must register and be eligible to become a part of the Baselight Learning Programme to obtain a licence.FilmLight will initially talk to participants to assess individual needs and then provide them with a free licence for the appropriate length of time, along with practice material they can use for practice. FilmLight will also develop regular video tutorials and live best-practice webinars for members of the Baselight Learning Programme.

Weve had growing requests from freelance colourists and creative artists for this product, explained FilmLight founder and CEO, Steve Chapman. But we dont just want to hand out a free piece of software and walk away. We want to work with training institutions and the creatives to make sure that they have the right resources and support to achieve their goals.

Weve reached pretty far with our team of in-house trainers but it just isnt physically possible for everyone to access face-to-face training with FilmLight product specialists, said Chapman. With the growing popularity of the BLG metadata workflow, and the forthcoming release 5.0 across our product line, this grading software provides a unique opportunity for everyone to get a handle on Baselights advanced colour tools as used by top-notch artists everywhere.

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Free version of Baselight grading software announced - TV Tech Global