Page 35 - IT Essentials And Data Recovery For Online Businesses

business. Two of the most common software applications used by 90% of all

business are Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop.

MS Office consists of a suite of software tools that include an extensive word-

processing application, a spreadsheet program and a tool for creating graphic

presentations. New, MS Office has a price tag that ranges from $400 for the
standard version to $680 for the deluxe version. If you own an earlier version, you
can purchase the newest version as an upgrade for around $250. An older version

(2004) will run about the same price, if you don’t own it already.

Adobe Photoshop is a massive, highly complex image editing application that is
considered the industry standard. It is indispensable for any business that does any

sort of graphic design and publishing. The new version is priced at $570, while

older versions go for around $250.

If your business is a non-profit organization or related to education, you may
qualify for “academic pricing.” This is a steep discount (sometimes as much as

65%) off the full price made available to teachers, students, school administrators
and other education employees. To be eligible, you must typically submit a copy of

your school’s ID, a teaching certificate or a pay stub from the school district at
which you are employed. The only real difference between an “academic version”

and the “full version” of a software application is that the “academic version” does
not usually include the documentation in printed form (it is however available online

as a “.pdf” document).

If you don’t qualify for an academic discount and purchasing even older version is
beyond your current means, you should definitely know about Open Office and

GIMP.

These programs are free-ware versions of Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop
respectively. Open Office (available at http://www.openoffice.org) has virtually all

of the functionality of MS Office, can be used to edit MS Office documents and will