Open Source authors have many excellent alternatives to expensive software. Here are some links to free or open source software for Windows.
AVG Anti-Virus - Free Edition - http://free.grisoft.com
GIMP - Advanced Photo Editing - http://www.gimp.org/
Open Office - Free Office Suite - http://www.openoffice.org/
Scribus - Desktop Publishing - http://www.scribus.net/
Dia - Flowcharting and diagramming - http://dia-installer.de/
Filezilla - FTP Client - http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/
7-Zip - File Compression Utility - http://www.7-zip.org/
