Great Free Software
Productivity____________________________________________
OpenOffice.org
A office suite that does everything MS Office does, only for free. It's also compatable with MS Word and Excel files. Open Office includes a word processor, spreadsheet program, presentation software and more.
Replaces: Microsoft Office - You save $200.00
Imaging________________________________________________
Gimp
I've always been a huge fan of Adobe. But I've never believed the price they are asking for PhotoShop was reasonable. Enter GIMP - the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring - and it argualbly does it all as well as PhotoShop, minus a few brushes and widgets. There is even a version called "GimpShop" that feels a little more like the old standby.
Replaces: PhotoShop - You save $999.00
IrfanView
Incredibly popular, IrfanView is a very fast, small, compact and innovative graphic viewer for Windows - simple for beginners and powerful for professional. Some of it's many basic features include resizing, rotation, grayscale conversion, red eye reduction, slideshow, cropping, multimedia player, effects (sharpen, blur, etc) and more. IrfanView has long been a standard for anyone who figits with images.
Replaces: Many basic photo editing programs that offer less - You save: about $20
FastStone Image Viewer
Like IrfanView, FastStone Image Viewer is an image browser, converter and editor that supports all major graphic formats including BMP, JPEG, JPEG 2000, GIF, PNG, PCX, TIFF, WMF, ICO and TGA. It has a nice array of features such as image viewing, management, comparison, red-eye removal, emailing, resizing, cropping, color adjustments, musical slideshow and much more.
Replaces: Many basic photo editing programs that offer less - You save: about $20
Utilities____________________________________________
AVG Anti-Virus
I've never understood why people buy Norton Anti-Virus. It's big and clunky, they make you buy "contracts" to their software and it invades your computer as if it were a virus itself. So why do people put up with that when AVG is around? AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition is the most popular free solution available at no cost to home users and provides the high level of detection capability that millions of users around the world trust to protect their computers. Free updates too. I've been using it for 5 years now - not a single virus has touched my computer.
Replaces: Norton Anti-Virus - You Save: $40 and your sanity.
Media____________________________________________
Media Monkey
For the money - and for large collections - the finest music player you'll ever find. The free version will
give you everything you need. You only have to pay if you want the bells and whistles. Create playlists, burn, rip, organize, search and on and on. It's a peach.
VLC Media Player
If it's video - this will play it. I was sick and tired of jumping all over trying to find the right player for Real video, Apple video, Windows Media, yada yada. The VLM came along with this nifgty little player that does everything. And then some. And then some more.
