Business Applications

Of course, Microsoft Office is the industry standard, though it’s very expensive. A couple great free alternatives are Open Office and the 602PC Suite of office applications, both compatiple with Microsoft Office file formats. As the price of MS Office can range beyond $600, one compromise is to purchase a cheaper version of Office, then supplement it with free alternatives.

Image Processing

Adobe Photoshop is obviously the best image processing software available. It’s worth the high price, but some cheaper and some free alternatives exist. Cheaper options include Paintshop Pro. Free options include The Gimp.

Cheap digital cameras and huge memory cards have taught us the need for competant software to organize and manage our pictures once they’re in our computers. Adobe Photoshop Elements provides powerful but accessible photo manipulation tools (such as red-eye removal, coversion to sepia-tone or black and white, and so one), while Adobe Photoshop Album provides flexible image organization and publishing tools. Of special note is Picasa, a photo management package (now owned by Google) that provides decent picture management, some basic photo enhancement tools, and integrated printing and publishing options.

For image viewing and very basic editing (cropping, etc.), Irfanview is excellent.

Web Browsers

Mozilla’s free Firefox browser is vastly superior to Internet Explorer; it’s much safer, standards-compliant, and flexible. Another nice alternative browser is Opera.

FTP Clients

File transfers are handled with grace by SmartFTP, free for personal use. WS_FTP and CuteFTP are good alternatives, though they cost between $39 and $59, depending on the license.

Security Tools

Zone Alarm is a great firewall with a free version available. GriSoft’s free version of AVG Anti-virus software is well-respected and low-profile anti-virus software. A couple free tools are recommended for fighting spyware: Spybot Search-and-Destroy and Lavasoft’s Ad-Aware.

CD/DVD Tools

Nero is the choice for burning CDs and DVDs containing data, audio, video, or photo slideshows. Winamp is a good choice for audio and video playback.