Gimp: Image editing, similar to Adobe Photoshop. This program is free, but requires you to download an "enviroment" for the program to run in.- http://www.gimp.org

OpenOffice: A free version of Microsoft Office. Use Open Office 2.0 for Windows, or Neo Office for Macs.- http://www.openoffice.org

Adobe Reader: A very important program that opens PDF files.- http://www.adobe.com

Mozilla Firefox: A safe and free web browser with tabbed browsing if desired.- http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/

Camino: A browser similar to Safari, but made by Mozilla, and only for Macs.- http://www.caminobrowser.org/

Mozilla Thunderbird: Mozilla's free email client that is safer than Outlook Express.- http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird/

VLC: A media player that plays most music and movie formats.- http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

WinRAR: An equivalent of Winzip, but also understands the .rar format. It can compress things more than .zip files.- http://www.rarlab.com/download.htm

AdAware: Anti-spyware for Windows. Free and fast, it is a very important program.- http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/

Spybot: Another free anti-spyware program.- http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/

Zone Alarm: A good firewall program.- http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/company/products/znalm/freeDownload.jsp

Google Earth: A satellite atlas of the world.- http://earth.google.com/

Audacity: A free sound recording and editing program.- http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/

Garageband.com: Free music. Not great for school, but your up and coming band can post music there.- http://www.garageband.com