I saw the post about free/paid software and thought we could start a thread recommending free/opensource alternatives. Here are a few that I use to get things rolling;
Mind Mapping
http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki....php/Main_Page
FTP
http://filezilla-project.org/
Browser
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/
Audio recorder
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Notepad/text
http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm
Antivirus free.avg.com
Photoshop type grahpics
www.gimp.org
This page here has more for windows users;
http://opensourcewindows.org/