More free stuff

Here is another list of free software you can pick up. For most people, this takes care of 90-100% of what you want to do with your computer, so there is not a need to buy anything at all after you invest in the hardware and an internet connection. Of the twenty packages listed, here are the ones I use or are familiar with:

• Mozilla Firefox
• Mozilla Thunderbird
• Filezilla
• GnuCash (I've just played with it a little to see if I can avoid buying Quicken)
• Audacity
• GIMP
• OpenOffice
• VLC
• Notepad ++
• 7-Zip
• Ubuntu

There are a couple here that I may be looking at more carefully. I hadn't been aware of Calibre for e-book management, but I gave it a test spin and was very impressed.