The Windows ports of a lot of open source software are starting to get really good. I’d passed OSS up before, but now I’m giving it another look. A few packages that seem promising:

Mozilla Firefox - tabbed Web browser. It’s already replaced Internet Explorer as my default. Mozilla Thunderbird - e-mail client. I’m having some trouble with dates on the Outlook import, but once those are rectified I’m going to switch to this. Lynx - text-only Web browser. Useful when you want to read news without a bunch of ad clutter. Image Magick - command line utilities for image manipulation. Improve the contrast, boost the color, crop and resize your images en masse. Audacity - audio editor. Haven’t tried this yet, but it looks to be nearly as good as SoundForge.

It’s getting to where you don’t really need to pirate expensive professional software to get professional results. Closed-source still tends to have a bit more polish and usability at this point, but the gap seems to be closing.