Guys,
I've always been a person that not so much likes a free deal, but likes the idea of non-controlled software in the ilk of M$oft.
I'm using OpenOffice at the moment as a drop-in for M$ Office and it does everything that Office does and a bit more.
I'll give a link later on today when I get up.
But does anyone else have any open-source software that will work with M$ and the like?.

For photo manipulation, The Gimp is very good. I use it heaps for adjusting brightness/contrast, and for cutting the useful bits out of photos etc.

depends what you want to do..

mp3 rippers, software gadgets, curiosities, knicknacks and anything a 19 year old is apt to code in his spare time and use to pirate software abound, but hard(er) core apps for business/industry are a little lacking in the open source world, at least for windows. As a platform linux shows a little more promise in that department. What sort of stuff did you have in mind?

a link...
http://osswin.sourceforge.net/