The Tightwad's Guide to Making the Most Out of Your Computer.

Something I learned when I got my laptop is that a lot of the programs I had grown accustomed to using on my school's computers, as well as programs that my family owned, cost money.  As a high school student with no job, this posed a problem, so I scoured the internet to find the freest, best programs for my (currently three year-old) laptop.  Since I'm told that people like free things, I decided that I might make my findings public.  Note that some programs are still in their beta stages, and might be unstable, but as the adage goes, you get what you pay for.  Beta programs will be indicated as such, and with that, onto the guide.

• meebo: You might think it's a little odd for the first item on this list to be a website, but this website can successfully replace any IM programs you have on your computer.  Got AIM?  use Meebo. Yahoo?  Meebo.  MSN?  Meebo.  Google Talk?  Yes, Meebo.  It even saves your conversations, if you want it to.
• Google Pack: This is actually a number of other programs that have the Google seal of approval, including Google Desktop (with two-tap access to the Internet and any file on your hard drive), Google Earth (the most fun you'll have getting directions), Mozilla Firefox (a web browser with huge expandability), and Picasa (a photo organizer with a bunch of small editing tools).
• Internet Explorer 7 (beta): For the daring among us, Microsoft has made the future version of their web browser available right now.  Some of the benefits of upgrading to 7 include tabbed browsing (which has already been made available in every other browser) and a clean and simple RSS reader (if you don't know what RSS is, think of it as a dog that gets the paper for you, except on your computer).  You might say that these features are already in every other browser, but IE7 does them well enough that it's worth a look.
• Microsoft Office 2007 (beta): To start, it's free.  To elaborate, it gives you all the tools you need for papers, spreadsheets, and presentations.  To conclude, it's worth every penny.
• The GIMP: If you like pictures and are a college student, then you probably wish you had the money for Adobe Photoshop.  Fortunately, this open-source alternative has most of the same features of Photoshop.  The only thing about GIMP is that you need to also install something called the GTK+ Runtime Environment, which can be found here.