Good software

6. Word Processors

Get rid of the Microsoft suites (and Corel WordPerfect for that matter) and get something worth your processor time: OpenOffice. It has everything MS Works and Office have (database, spreadsheet, word processor, slideshow) and it’s completely free and open source. Not only that, but the greatest company on the face of the earth is hiring people to help out on this project to make it even better!  Of course, it also works on *Nix.

Get it: www.openoffice.org

7. FTP Software

I’ve used a few FTP programs out there, but there is only one that I love: FileZilla. It has a very simple, clean interface with more features than you have ever dreamt of. It is also completely free and open-source!  Plus, you can either use the *Nix ports or run it in Wine!

Get it: filezilla.sourceforge.net

Actually, just to make a point I’ll tack on another section …

8 – ∞. Everything else

If there’s something else you need a free alternative for, you can probably find it on SourceForge.net. All of the programs there are free, open-source, and have most likely been used by me before. Among some of the best on there are the GIMP image editing software and the Pidgin multi-protocol IM client.

In addition to SourceForge.net, another great website is Sysinternals. They have tons of great, free (and often open-source) programs that you can use. My favorites are Autoruns (shows absolutely everything that starts up with windows) and Process Explorer (a much more powerful alternative to Task Manager).

Get them:

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