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not the only reason why I choose Firefox, it is also more stable and secure than the other major browser.

Email Client
No Microsoft Outlook? Sick of Microsoft Outlook Express? A capable replacement is the Mozilla Thunderbird (http://www.mozilla.org/produc ts/thunderbird). It has very good functionality, almost as good as Microsoft Outlook. And if you are using it to download your pop3 emails from your Internet Service Provider, it is an excellent software.

Graphics Editor
I want to highlight two software here, as I find both to be complementary to each other. First up is GIMP (http://gimp-win.sourceforge.n et/), which is an excellent graphics editing software. I used GIMP and Microsoft Paint to open the same file, and did a minor editing on the graphics, and save them both in the same format. The one I save under GIMP always gives me a better resolution. I am not a professional graphics editor, but use it to edit my graphics that I use for my websites, and I am totally convinced that this software is a top quality graphics editor. If you need Scalable Vector Graphics format, Inkscape (http://www.inkscape.org/) will do the job for you. It might take some learning, but it is time well spend.

Archiver Software
While Microsoft Windows' File Explorer comes with basic archiver function, 7-zip (http://www.7-zip.org/) has been my preferred choice. It is able to read almost all kinds of archiver formats and is a great addition to your arsenal of software.

FTP Client
If you are into setting up website, and need a good FTP client, try File-zilla (http://filezilla.sourceforge. net/). It has all the functions you need for a FTP client. Or if you are running Firefox (which you should), you can download FireFTP (http://fireftp.mozdev.org/), which is an add-on for Firefox.

PDF Creator
If you are looking for a PDF creator (note that in OpenOffice.org, you can save directly to PDF format), look no further than, well, PDFCreator (http://www.pdfforge.org/produ cts/pdfcreator). With this, you can print anything to PDF format. Stop wasting your ink and paper to print out confirmation page. Save them in PDF format and file them up electronically. Save the earth!

Disk Encryption Software
If you have a need to encrypt certain confidential files in your desktop or laptop, TrueCrypt (http://www.truecrypt.org/) does this nicely. You can create a virtual encrypted disk, encrypt an entire hard disk partition, or even encrypt an external storage device like a USB Thumb drive.

You can see that there are some very good free software out there, so the next time you intend to shelve out your money to buy a software that you need, check out and see if there are any equivalent software that you can get for absolutely nothing.

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