Geeking Out

Really Good Applications

VLC Media Player

Replaces Windows Media Player and Quicktime

Quit messing around with the above-mentioned applications. VLC will play everything, and it has more options. Very easy to use too!
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
Did I mention it was open-source? Open-source means good, reliable, FREE software.

Firefox

Replaces Internet Explorer

You haven't heard of Firefox yet? Seriously, millions of people use it. 27% of all internet users use it. Why? Because it's extremely powerful, fast, and, uh, free... it's open-source.
http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/

Open Office & Neo Office

Replaces Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office costs lots of money, and Open Office does nearly everything Microsoft Office does, and more! (Does Excel, Word, Powerpoint) Again, Open Office is open-source, which means good, reliable, and free.
http://www.openoffice.org http://www.neooffice.org/

Cute PDF

Replaces Adobe Acrobat Professional

This is a PDF distiller, ie, print your documents to PDF from anywhere. For windoze only. It'll save you a couple hundred bucks at least!
If you're on a mac, you already can create PDFs for free since it's built-in
http://www.cutepdf.com/

GIMP

Replaces Adobe Photoshop

Photoshop costs a lot of money, and why pirate when you can use a free, reliable alternative? The GIMP is open-source, and is the best replacement for Photoshop.
http://www.gimp.org

Things Hard Not To Get

• Adobe CS3... it really is good if you design stuff.
• Apple Macbooks... get what you pay for? I think so.
• iPhone... it's an amazing little device.
• iTunes Genius Bar... it's pretty amazing.
• Google Calendar... simply because you can share it with everyone and everyone can view it
• Google Docs... sharing docs and online word processing all in one!
• Spanning Sync... if you use both iCal and Google Calendar, GET IT
• Smultron... for the coder in you
• iTunes BPM... to BPM your music collection so you can DJ better

Hard-Core Mac Stuff

Optimized Firefox Builds

All the power of Firefox, and all the speed of Safari
http://fox.lazycat.info/

Optimized Thunderbird Builds

Blazing fast mail client so you can breath easy and organize your mail easy.
http://vafer.org/blog/20060417133832

Cyberduck

A cheap and easy FTP client to access your online server stuff. Quite good and user friendly
http://cyberduck.ch/

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