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Winston-Salem
Black
Chamber of Commerce
| P.O. Box 4462 | Winston-Salem, North Carolina
27115
Phone: (336) 575-2006
| Fax: (336) 306-5702 | Email: rpender1@triad.rr.com
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QUENTIN'S
BIO
Quentin Huff is an attorney, writer, visual
artist, and professional tennis player who lives and works in
Winston-Salem,
North Carolina. Quentin is a currently a staff writer for PopMatters: The Magazine of Global
Culture,
and his writing appears, or is forthcoming, in: Casa Poema, Pemmican
Press, Switched-On Gutenberg, Defenestration, Poems
Niederngasse, and The Ringing Ear, Cave Canem’s anthology
of
contemporary African American poetry rooted in the south. His family
owns and
operates Huff Art Studio, an art gallery specializing in fine art,
printing,
and graphic design.
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OFFICE PRACTICE
[Part One]
by Quentin Huff
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Computers
have revolutionized
the modern office by increasing efficiency and productivity.
Problem is,
while the price of a desktop computer for your office is on the
decline, you'll
still need peripheral equipment (like printers and scanners) and
software.
To make matters worse, some of the software will be vital to your
business
(i.e. word processing tools, contact managers, finance tracking
programs), but
you'll also pay for programs designed to protect your computer from
viruses and
spyware.
This
column highlights FREE
programs you can download for your computer. Not only will they
save you
money, they're good at what they do.
1. AbiWord
- http://www.abisource.com
AbiWord
is a word processing
program ("similar to Microsoft Word", as the home site says).
I've used this program and found it to be just as good as Word when
you're
working solely with text. It has almost all of the features
you'll find
in Microsoft Word and it doesn't take up as much space on your computer.
2. OpenOffice
- http://www.openoffice.org
So you've got
the free AbiWord program mentioned
above. Now you're worried that you'll still have to pay big bucks
for the
rest of the "Office" suite -- Excel, PowerPoint, Access, etc. Well,
thanks to OpenOffice, there might be another option. This open source
software
offers a powerhouse of tools (word processor, presentation maker,
database,
spreadsheet, drawing tool, math function creator). Definitely
worth
knowing about.
3. GnuCash - http://www.gnucash.org
Developed as
a collaborative effort by people
located in several different countries, GnuCash is a "personal and
small-business financial-accounting software" -- in other words, say
"Goodbye" to Quicken and Microsoft Money, and say "Hello"
to a little extra cash in your budget. GnuCash works like a check
register and features a few nice accessory functions.
 4. Acrobat Reader
- http://www.adobe.com
In your
Internet travels, you're likely to
encounter PDF files, which are pretty much impossible to alter even
after
you've downloaded them. In order to open them on your computer,
though,
you'll need Adobe Acrobat Reader. If you don't have it already (which
is
unlikely, but it happens), you can find it at Adobe's website.
5. PDFCreator - http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator
A friend of
mine learned about this software at
a conference for attorneys, as many attorneys use PDF files to send
documents
in a more secure (see also: "the person on the other end can't make
changes to it") format than a simple word-processing file. You
can
use PDFCreator to create a PDF file of a document from any
program. The
viewer of your document need only have Acrobat Reader on his or her
computer. The program is handy and easy to use.
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 The
WSBCC is a proud
member of the National Black
Chamber of Commerce
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©
2003-2007
The Winston-Salem Black Chamber of Commerce, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Website graphics and content remain the property of the individual
artists, designers, and authors.
This
site designed, hosted, published, & promoted by Huff Art
Studio | contact: webmaster@huffartstudio.com
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