This is a completely trivial posting, but some friends requested this information and I thought others may benefit from it. Apparently some parents are having financial problems due to purchasing software for their children's school needs. So here are a few links to free (and legal) alternatives which are as good as or better than their commercial counterparts.


Office Software: OpenOffice (replaces Microsoft Office or the Corel Packages)


Mathematics Software: SageMath (basic alternative to Mathematica or Maple)


Graphics Software: The GIMP (basic alternative to Adobe Photoshop or other graphics packages)

Antivirus Software: AVG (alternative to McAfree or Norton packages)

EBook Organizer: Calibre (replaces many proprietary eBook programs)


PDF Editor: NitroPDF (replaces Adobe Acrobat and Reader)


Programming IDEs: Visual Studio (basic versions are free for C,C++,C#, and VB programming) or Eclipse IDE


Renderer: Daz3D or VUE (not school related, but still good for art projects)