Here’s the scenario: you buy yourself a shiny new computer for work/school/personal use (nothing illicit, I hope), and after unboxing it and turning it on you realize it’s missing a plethora of stuff you actually kinda need. Maybe it shipped without Microsoft Office (I’ve seen a few systems that, for one reason or another, don’t actually have it installed- which I find incredibly odd), or maybe you need Photoshop.

Or maybe, just maybe, you’re downright irritated with what it ships with, and you’re looking for a change.

Whatever reason, you want an alternative. And believe it or not, there are actually some awesome ones. It gets better too- they’re all free.

GIMP (Adobe Photoshop)

Photoshop is one of the best photo editing tools on the PC. If you need to do professional looking graphic design, you can’t get much better. Trouble is, the price tag’s enough to make your eyes bleed (CS5 goes for over $400.00.) I mean, yeah, design work is important and all, but that price seems more geared towards organizations and professional institutions that use it. In a lot of cases, the massive collection of features is, quite frankly, overkill.

So what about all us normal folk?

Ladies and gentlemen, meet GIMP. GIMP is, hands down, the best freeware photo editing software I’ve ever seen. Want to do some image work, but don’t care to shell out an arm and a leg for Photoshop? Download GIMP- it’s free, and chances are unless you’re a design professional you aren’t going to miss some of Photoshop’s ritzier features anyway.

OpenOffice (Microsoft Office)

You’ve probably already heard of the Openoffice Suite – a full collection of software that kicks the hundredsomething price tag of Microsoft office straight in the stones with its own price of…well, nothing.  It’s got the full suite of programs, from a spreadsheet to a document editor to a power point program. What’s more, it can open and edit any format that can be opened by the programs in Microsoft Office. Pretty sweet, no?

Now, OpenOffice isn’t perfect. During my run with it, I noticed the spreadsheet program didn’t really like to play nice with Excel’s macros, and the document editor ran into a few problems editing files from newer versions of Microsoft Office. It’s been a while since I’ve used OpenOffice, so they may well have fixed the glitches I’m talking about.

Either way, it’s better than nothing – which is what you’ll have otherwise.

VLC Media Player (Windows Media Player)

True, Windows Media Player is free. But that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be alternatives for it, right? Me, I’ve never been particularly taken with Microsoft’s default media software. It just doesn’t really suit me. I want a bit more from my media software.

That said, I love VLC media player. And what’s not to love? It’s compatible with more formats than WMP and it’s got a smaller memory footprint to boot. Pretty much the only thing Windows Media Player has going for it over VLC is Windows Media Centre. A decent advantage, but I still prefer VLC. Give it a try.

7Zip (Winzip/Winrar)

Some of you might try to argue that Winzip and Winrar are free, but they aren’t. Not any more, anyway. Winzip gives you the CHANCE to download it for free, sure but you have to visit a bunch of sister sites and sign up for products/services/trials there. There are open source programs that do the exact same thing as Winzip and Winrar, and you don’t have to jump through hoops for the privilege of downloading them.

7Zip’s just one example. It’s got a bit of an ugly, simplistic interface, but it does what it’s supposed to do, which is view and extract archives. You don’t really need anything more than that, truthfully.

Foxit Reader (Adobe Reader)

To be fair, Adobe’s pdf software is free if all you want to do is view pdf documents. For most people, that’s enough. I don’t really use it for much else myself, truth be told.

If you’re looking to do a little more though give Foxit a try before you put in for the full version of Adobe Reader. It’s got pretty much the same features as Adobe Acrobat, with the added benefit of being able to edit and save most pdf documents. Not too shabby, eh?

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