Four Free Programs that You Can't Do Without

There are a lot of free, open source programs on the internet-and here is a short list of some of the more useful ones that can save you money over buying much more expensive software that does the same thing.

VLC Media Player -- http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

VLC is a swiss army knife of a media player. Like many people, I didn't realize that when you bought a Windows Vista Basic or Business (in my case, Business) laptop, you couldn't play DVDs. VLC saved me money and it can save you some too-give it a try instead of buying a piece of software.

On top of handling DVDs, it can also play VCDs, and various types of audio and video files (such as DivX, mp3, ogg, mpeg-4, etc.) It's got a small memory footprint, is very customizable, supports Windows, MacOS, and various Linux distrobutions.

Paint.NET--http://www.getpaint.net/

Paint.NET is another indispensable program and essentially it's a replacement for Photoshop. It's a great addition for the student with a project, the professional in need of some touch ups, or the mother who would like to remove some red eye. It's just as powerful as Photoshop, there are plenty of helpful tutorials on the official forums, and Paint.NET is also customizable through the use of plug-ins.

Open Office--http://www.openoffice.org/

Open Office 3 is, more or less, a replacement for the more widely used Microsoft Office. Open Office is capable of all the office standard suite functions such as word processing, presentations, spread sheets, and the sort. It's compatible with Microsoft's file formats as well as its own open standard.

This is a great download for the student who didn't get Office with their computer and people who only have MSWorks (or equivalent) on their computer. Open Office runs on Windows, MacOS, and various Linux distrobutions.

Foobar2000 -- http://www.foobar2000.org/?page=Overview

Foobar is a highly customizable, flexible audio playback program. It supports all of the standard formats (mp3, mp4, etc) as well as some high quality lossless formats (FLAC) out of the box. There are plenty of downloadable plug-ins to add support for more types of file formats, as well as advanced features such as ASIO or Kernel Streaming playback. Foobar2000 is a highly reccomended audio playback program.