It has been approximately 5 years I finished using stolen or pirated software. I must admit: I love it!
I love the look on the face of others when they hear I have no illegal software on my machine.
I love the feeling of being legit with all that software.
I love to help others do their first steps in this uncommon world.
And no, I love my money and don't spend it when it's not necessary.

It's all about the attitude.

The most difficult part is the attitude that needs to change.
My previous attitude was to look for a well known brand, download the software, crack it and play with it. If it could do what I needed it for I kept using it. But what with all the unused features? What with the price of this software? That's not important, it's "free" says the thief.

Like with everything in this world there are different options you can choose from. But do we have the choice with software?

Sure we have. I usually see two different options: a) use open source software or b) find an alternative that is worth it's price.
Many (almost all) open source software packages are available for free. Many are even of a great quality, but finding the right packet is difficult. There is a great site around called osalt. It's a huge list with well known commercial software and their similar alternatives in the open source world. There is a short description and a list of supported operating systems. Be sure to check out this site and find what you need.

In the rare case it is possible that you can't find what you need, just look around for other software that is less expensive. Dare to try free beta's, usually when pre-ordering you get a reduction.

aether - Mac OS X

On my Mac I have three commercial software packages that need to be payed for. The first one is Mac OS X, but this one I payed for when buying the computer.

The second one is VMWare Fusion. When I was in then need for a hypervisor on my Mac the only open source alternative was Q. Unfortunately it had a huge performance impact on my machine. So I tried Fusion's beta program. The product worked very well and a few months before the final release there was a 50% off from the price of $80 making it $40 or €30 (by then).
Right now you can use VirtualBox as alternative, but that wasn't available yet when I needed it.

The third commercial software is called Bibble. I couldn't find a good open source alternative that ran on Mac and Adobe Lightroom 2 with it's $300 is really to expensive for me. So I bought Bibble that delivers the required features for $130 or €83.

What about the rest? It's fairly simple here's a short list:

• Browsing - Mozilla Firefox
• Email - Mozilla Thunderbird
• Office Suite - OpenOffice.org (or NeoOffice in the past)
• Chat - Adium
• Launcher - Quicksilver
• Notification - Growl
• Video - VLC
• Burning - Burn
• (s)FTP - Cyberduck
• Code editor - Smultron
• Backup - iBackup (not open source, free for personal use)
• ...

sws00448 - Microsoft Windows

This is the computer I have from my company. I'm 'forced' to use many commercial software but they do pay for it. So it's not really my problem. Let's skip that boring non-Office or administrative software if you want.

• Browsing - Mozilla Firefox
• Full-Disk Encryption - TrueCrypt
• Secure Erasing - Eraser
• Office Suite 2- OpenOffice.org
• PortableApps - Portable Apps
• Chat - Pidgin
• Launcher - Launchy
• Video - VLC
• Burning - Infrarecorder
• (s)FTP - FileZilla
• Code editor - Notepad++
• Shell - Cygwin
• ...

neptunus - Linux / Ubuntu

No need to make a list here. For all the software you want just got to the "Add/Remove Software" menu item. In contrary to some other Operating Systems you can really add software in this place.

Conclusion: I changed my attitude

Do I miss something on my machine? No, and I'm really happy with the things I use, and (almost) all for free.

Jump on the bus and try out free software.

For those unlucky people like me that have SEP installed on their machines, and don't have the uninstall password. You can uninstall it easily without a password using this trick:

From be.comp.os.unix ...
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX wrote:
>> Hallo,
>>
>> Ik probeer om xserver te starten door ssh.
>>
>> Wanneer ik een verbinding maak via ssh en ik geeft het comando startx.
>> Dan start x wel op mijn unix machine maar niet op de host die ik op dat
>> moment gebruik.

Zo gaat dat niet.
Ofwel start je een X server op je 'remote machine' en neem je dat scherm over met iets zoals VNC.

Ofwel start je een X server op je lokale machine (windows, linux, mac,...) en pipe je de applicaties door je SSH tunnel naar je lokale Xserver.
Hoe gaat dit te werk? In mijn situatie run ik MacOS X op mijn laptop. Soms heb ik toegang nodig tot linux-only apps (ofwel ben ik te lui om het te recompilen met alle deps).

Op mijn Mac OS X laptop start ik X op. (X11.app)
Vervolgens open ik mijn shell (terminal) en typ ik:

$ ssh -Y 192.168.1.141

(je kan ook -X gebruiken, zie manpages) Zo geraak ik ingelogd op mijn remote linux bak en heeft SSH al direct mijn $DISPLAY variable goed gezet.

Vervolgens start ik gewoon mijn grafische app op, de applicatie wordt door de ssh tunnel naar mijn MacOS X X11 server gestuurd. (aether = MacOS X, chri-desktop = linux onder virtuele machine)

chri@aether ~
 Tue 10 Apr 22:05 $ echo $DISPLAY
:0.0
chri@aether ~
 Tue 10 Apr 22:07 $ ssh -Y 192.168.1.141
chri@192.168.1.141's password:
Linux chri-desktop 2.6.20-11-generic #2 SMP Thu Mar 15 08:03:07 UTC 2007 i686
Last login: Tue Apr 10 22:07:32 2007
chri@chri-desktop:~$ echo $DISPLAY
localhost:10.0
chri@chri-desktop:~$ firefox&
[1] 5593
chri@chri-desktop:~$
[1]+  Done                    firefox
chri@chri-desktop:~$ exit
logout
Connection to 192.168.1.141 closed.
chri@aether ~
 Tue 10 Apr 22:09 $

For some time I had issues to update the Microsoft Windows XP pro operating system that runs on my system. As it's running in VMWare Fusion I usually don't start it every day but only when I need to run Windows-specific software.
Whatever, the problem was that Windows Update failed due to '3 different services not running'. Unfortunately for me these 3 services were running. Digging trough the Microsoft Support pages I found a way to contact MS with a support request. After a copy-paste of the error and after adding a description of the problem the website told me I should get an answer in the 24 hours.

24 hours later (work-days) I got a reply ! Great !.

Case Reference Number: SRZ070127002312.
Dear Christophe,
Thank you for contacting Microsoft Technical Support.
I would like to introduce myself as the ‘Support Engineer’ that has taken ownership of 
your Microsoft Support Case.
<snip>
>From the case details, I understand that you are facing an issue, while Updating 
Windows. If this is incorrect or I have misunderstood the issue you are experiencing, 
please provide me with the exact details.
Please log on to the following link:
<http://djlizard.net/software/Dial-a-fix-v0.60.0.24.zip>
It would ask you run or save the file, Click on Save and save the file on the desktop. 
Run the saved file which is known as “dial-a-fix”------- Tick all the options in the window 
------ Click on Go ------- it will prompt you for the time and date set it correct and Click Ok.
After completion of the process (it might take 5 minutes) Click Exit and try to update Windows.
<snip>

Do you notice something weird?
Microsoft Support telling me to run a 3rd-party Freeware to fix their own buggy software/operating system !
Well, I can't really complain. The fix worked. But I kindly asked MS to make a donation to that guy. :-)

From an IEBlog I've finally found how you can debug JavaScript ising Microsoft Internet Explorer. This article discusses the things you need to enable and install on your MS Windows machine.
Unfortunately I still don't understand why the script I use doens't fade in/out with IE in my web environment. (on the moo.fx site it does work...)