If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

There is some great software available that can easily replace the expensive popular ones. If you’re on a budget, then here’s a list of some great alternatives you can check into! I’m only going to list the most popular, but if you were to do a search on this, you’d definitely find more.

1) Windows This is of course the most obvious one, so we’ll start with it.

Alternatives:
Linux Taken straight from the Linux site. “Linux is a free Unix-type operating system originally created by Linus Torvalds with the assistance of developers all over the world. Linux is freely available to everyone.” Personally, I have always wanted to learn more about Linux and try it out, but I don’t want to have to give up Photoshop and other Windows and Mac based softwares I’ve already invested so much time into learning. Still might make the jump someday though.

2) Adobe Photoshop Probably the most well known and widely used graphics editing software.

Alternatives:
Paint.Net An open source bitmap drawing and editing application. Known for their simple and easy to use application with an intuitive user interface.

Gimp Probably the oldest and most well-known open source graphic application. It’s been around since 1995, and has become a widely used alternative to Photoshop. You can also checkout Gimpshop, it’s a modification of GIMP, intended to replicate the feel of Adobe Photoshop.

3) Adobe Dreamweaver This is the most widely used WYSIWYG editor on the market. The most expensive, too!

Alternatives:
Quanta Plus Steadily becoming a worthwhile competitor to the commercial web editors on the market. Quanta Plus’s features include multi-document interface, and WYSIWYG editor.

KompoZer It’s a wysiwyg HTML editor aimed towards advanced users. I’ve heard this comes equipped with a very good CSS editor.

4) MicroSoft Office Very expensive on it’s own.

Alternatives:
OpenOffice OpenOffice is a multi-platform office productivity suite compatible with all major file formats. In fact, MicroSoft Word now has a converter tool available to accept the OpenOffice format.

Google Docs Google Docs & Spreadsheets can handle most daily office work, such as composing and editing text documents, crunching numbers in a spreadsheet, and making basic slide shows.

5) Outlook & Outlook Express Would you like to escape the usual Microsoft security issues?

Alternatives:
Thunderbird Very versatile. It supports themes and extensions to customize and increase it’s functionality. It also incorporates a spam filter to cut down significantly on spam mail.

Gmail GMail is a very feature rich email client. It has quickly been gaining popularity.

There you have it for today. Once again, this is far from a complete list, but I just wanted to cover the most popular applications used, and show you that there are alternatives out there to help you save a buck or two!

Related posts:

1. Ready To Make The Jump To Linux? Let’s Go!
2. WordPad Ever Try It?
3. Loving Linux On Ubuntu 8.04
4. Run Windows Applications On Linux With WINE 1.0