It’s amazing how easy it is to find software that does exactly what you want it to do these days. And if you’re willing to put in the effort, you can make it do exactly what you want it to. After my computer crashed and I lost all my software, I needed quick replacements and found the following so good I don’t feel the need to go back to re-installing my old ones. I also managed to find a whole new set of great light weight software. Found many of these through Digital Inspiration.

1. OpenOffice.org – Don’t like it too much yet, but it is a full feature office suite for free. It can only get better.
2. SpeedCrunch – Wish I had this with me in university. Simple, fast and dead useful.
3. Scilab – Open source Matlab alternative. Not that great, but hey, it’s free albeit useless for now.
4. Paint.net – It’s a good MS Paint replacement (I used that quite often). Not enough to replace Ps CS4 though.
5. Inkscape – Vector graphics. I haven’t really used vector graphics before, but its fast and easy enough.
6. Notepad++ – Very handy notepad replacement. Specially if you deal with any sort of codes.
7. Audacity – Haven’t used it much yet, but comes highly rated for editing audio files.
8. VLC – Who doesn’t have it? The best media player on earth.
9. VioVideo Converter – Bear in mind, converting videos is never quick (for an average pc). Just OK.
10. Microsoft Visual Studio Express – Haven’t used it much to comment. But have found good support for learning.

The ones in green are must-haves in my opinion. (Maybe not the last one, but I randomly came upon the interleaved sequence, and found it odd not having #10 in green too Yes, I have OCD) You can find more open source projects up to date  here.