Good free software to put on a new computer...

Word Processor: OpenOffice Writer
Looks just like Microsoft Word 2003, and has the same features. It saves documents in Word format, and is very fast. As good as Word 2003, and better than Word 2007.

Spreadsheet: OpenOffice Calc
Good functionality and charting and similar to Excel 2003.

Sound Editor: Audacity
A great program, which can save in MP3 format after you download the free LAME MP3 DLL.

Graphics: GIMP
The best free image editor I could find. Good for some photo editing but its selection and editing tools were hard to use. The graphics area was the only area where I couldn't find a free program good enough to mean not having to buy commercial software. Photoshop is much better than GIMP, and GIMP had the most features I could find among the free graphics software programs.

Music Player: Windows Media Player
You can change its settings to record music in MP3 format so that your music can be shared with other programs and devices.

Anti-Spyware: Windows Defender
A good anti-spyware program that notifies you when you have spyware and can sometimes get rid of it. If it can't get rid of it, try this.

The Bells! The Bells!

Prisoners of Technology radio is now playing songs with sleigh bells added. Here's Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want and Love Will Tear Us Apart.

Fidelity Media Player

Fidelity Media Player launched last week. It lets you browse all of the video and podcasts on Fidelity's web site. It includes the TKC's text search feature, which lets you fast forward a found video to a few seconds before the search text is spoken. The design was done by Lis Cugini, & I wrote it in Flex.