read this for the list of programs and their free alternatives.

some alternatives aren’t truely alternatives yet. if you don’t want to pay and don’t want to get into trouble with pirate-wares, and if you are not fussy and are not after advance functions, they aren’t too bad.

also checkout http://www.osalt.com for more free alternatives.

some of the open source products i am using or have used:

• firefox – replaces IE
• thunderbird + sunbird – replaces outlook
• open office – replaces M$ office. this also creates pdf documents, so it replaces adobe acrobat as well.
• gimp – replaces photoshop
• filezilla – ftp client
• 7zip – file compression / uncompression tool.