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So you have your new Macbook, iMac or PowerMac now. The smell of an athletic shoe store hits your olfactory as you open the box. Ah, the great adventures that await you! You've already decided you want the Adobe Creative Suite 3 Master Collection, and that's going to take up about $2,500 of your hard earned budget. Depending on how you planned it, you may not have much more left over for essential software. That's where this list comes in. The following software is 100% free and I have personally tried and proven most of this software in an design industry based company with amazing results. Besides, if it doesn't work for you, it didn't cost you anything to start with!

1. Mozilla Firefox - Web Browser
http://www.getfirefox.com/ : No savings, aside from your sanity
This is a great browser, and much more powerful than the included Safari could ever be. It supports RSS live feed bookmarking, a seemingly endless amount of plugins, thousands of visually appealing themes, all a built around the most robust web browser ever made. It also includes pop-up blocker support that actually works.

2. Mozilla Thunderbird - Email Client
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/ : Savings $50
Brought to you by the Mozilla crew that gave you Firefox. Thunderbird is a lightweight email client that will replace Apple's Mail. It includes great built-in SPAM filtering, as well as integrated anti-phishing support.

3. Cyberduck - FTP Client
http://cyberduck.ch/ : Savings $25
Cyberduck is a full featured FTP client that support FTP, FTP/TLS, SSL/TLS and SFTP protocols. Why spend $25 or more when you can get a better product for free? They're also very quick with patches and updates, it seems like they're always making their product better and better. It's also available in over a dozen languages if you decide to pickup Slovak or Indonesian.

4. Linotype FontExplorer X - Font Management
http://www.linotype.com/fontexplorerX : Savings $40
FontExplorer is a very powerful and efficient font management program. We recently replaced Extensis Suitcase with this great program. The deciding factor wasn't the fact that it was free, but the fact that it far outperformed any other management software. But the fact that we saved thousands of dollars was an added bonus. In my own benchmarking, I was able to load an activate over 3000 fonts in less than 2 minutes. And it's made by the world leader in fonts, so you know it's got to be good.

5. Open Office - Office Software
http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/download/index.html : Savings $350
While I haven't personally used this software as I much prefer Microsoft products for it's applications such as Word and Excel, some have told me that Open Office works quite well. But I haven't ran any comparisons to brag on this. It's free, give it a try, ya like it, use it, if not, don't.

6. ClamAV - Virus Protection
http://www.clamav.net/ : Savings $50
While Mac's are virtually virus free, sometimes you'll need to check files before sending them out to others if they've been altered on a PC previously. ClamAV does a good job of this, at the price we want to pay. Currently for a Mac, this is going to be able all the protection you need aside from the built in Firewall.

7. Adium - Chat Client
http://www.adiumx.com/ : No savings, just an all-in-one IM/Chat client
Adium is a great program that allows you to have all your IM accounts all in the same place. Currently it supports all the major systems such as AOL/AIM, ICQ, .MAC, Jabber, Google Talk, LiveJournal, MSN, Yahoo, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, Novell Groupwise, Lotus Sametime, QQ and more. The only thing is you won't be able to do audio or video chats. You'll need the individual programs for that. But for basic IM services, file transfers, tabbed messaging, and searchable chat logging, Adium is your client. It also is 100% skin-able and customize able. Thousands of icons, menus, themes and more are available for easy download.

8. HandBrake - DVD Ripper
http://handbrake.m0k.org/?article=download : Savings $40
This is without a doubt the best DVD ripping software on the market. Great for backing up movies, family DVD's and more. It supports converting a DVD into .avi, .mp4 and Apple TV support. It supports 6 channel sound as well as DTS and Stereo. DVD conversion is a breeze and it's very easy to use. Once you get your settings the way you want, you can save it as a preset and all future DVD rips is a simply 2-3 click operation.

9. Print Window - Window Printer
http://www.searchwaresolutions.com/products/printwindow/ : Savings Unknown
If you were a former OS 9 user one of the things lost when moving into OS X was the Print Window function in Finder. This program basically restores that functionality as well as offers various improvements and options. For those of you not familiar with OS 9, this program will allow you to print the contents of folders, etc. Sometimes when delivering a CD or DVD you may be required to provide your client with a directory of everything on there. Print Window facilitates that for you.

10. Transmission - BitTorrent Client
http://transmission.m0k.org/ : Savings $10
One of the quickest and safest ways to download and transfer files these days is through P2P torrent files. Transmission is a great client that supports hot folders, manageable queues and more. My favorite feature is a hot folder that allows me to download the tracker file into the folder and Transmission automatically handles everything from there. That's what I call service! It's open source and often updated.

11. VLC Media Player - Media Player
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ : Savings $30
One thing you will notice if you're migrating from a PC is the lack of support for certain types of video. VLC has successfully handled any video file I've sent to it. I don't use it exclusively, but it does support FREE full screen video support unlike QuickTime.

12. UnRarX - RAR Archive Extractor
http://www.unrarx.com/ : Savings Unknown
My favorite archive type of choice will always be the .rar a format. UnRarX provides a very efficient Mac based extractor. I generally find it to be faster than it's Windows WinRAR couterpart. You won't be able to make any .rar archives with this software, but you can certainly open them.

13. GIMP - Graphics Editing
http://www.gimp.org/macintosh/ : Savings $500
While it is not Photoshop by any means, for the average user this should cover most of your basic image editing requirements. Obviously, I prefer Photoshop, however, if you are on a budget, or you just can't spend the money for Photoshop right now, this should tide you over.

14. Chicken of the VNC - VNC Client
http://sourceforge.net/projects/cotvnc/ : Savings $500
Chicken of the VNC is a light and speedy VNC client. OS X 10.4 and higher all have a built in VNC server, and you can also install a VNC server on any PC. This allows you to view and control the desktop of the VNC server. While not a complete replacement for the powerful Apple Remote Desktop or Timbuktu, it will provide you with some of the same basic features.