The following software is all Open Source and most of it is released under GPL. So it can be installed as often as you like.

7 Zip (File compression and archiving)

7-Zip is a usefull compression and archiving tool. It allows you to compress, decompress and archive files in most of the popular formats. Very usefull for decompressing files in unusual formats. Best of all it's free. It is not as simple to use as ZipCentral but has many more options. Takes some getting use to.

Amaya (HTML editor)

Amaya is a powerfull HTML editor written by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) who set the standard for HTML, XML, SVG and other web related markup languages

CDex (MP3 & Ogg ripper)

CDex is usefull for converting audio into other formats such as MP3 & Ogg Vorbis so you can save whole CDs to your hard disk without filling it completely.

FileZilla (File Transfer)

FileZilla is a fast FTP client for Windows with a lot of features. It supports a number of different transfer protocalls, including SSH

The Gimp for Windows (Image editor, similar to Photoshop™)

The GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It works quite differently to PhotoShop but is very powerfull and functional. In some ways it is not as easy to use but is often much faster and more configurable and much more automatable (if you know how).

Jabber (Instant Messenger)

Jabber is an open source instant messenging protocol, much like MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, AIM, etc, This means that, unlike the proprietry messenger networks & programs, from a Jabber client you can chat to anyone on any Instant Messenging network. The other thing that Jabber Clients have over other proprietry IM clients is that they don't have "popup" advertising windows telling you about all the crap someone is making money off.

It is a cheep (if you have an internet connection) way of talking to people anywhere in the world. It is particularly usefull if you want to chat to your colegues in other offices because it you don't have to pay for the phone call and it can be set to log your chats and thus you can have a record of your conversations.

If you would like to find out more go to the Jabber Software Foundation

eXodus

eXodus is a good, reliable Instant messenging client. It is simple to use and easy to set up, but has trouble connecting to MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and ICQ.

I haven't had a chance to try out this (new) release but previous versions were reliable and functional.

eXodus is not a very active project (only one release in the last year), but it's a good alternative if your version of Gaim crashes all the time.

Gaim

Gaim is a feature packed instant messengeing client. It is substantially more sophisticated than eXodus. It works very reliably and is more actively developed. It's what we now recomend, and provide support for.How to install and use Gaim.-->

The one thing that we have noticed is that it won't work on some computers. If you computer turns out to be one of them try eXodus

(I wasn't sure how to download a Mac OSX version but it exists.)

Psi

Psi looks fairly simple to use. It has all the same features that eXodux. It's big benifits are that it runs on any Operating Sysltem and that it is very light weight.

Mozilla Firefox (internet browser only)

Mozilla Firefox is an Internet Browser that is light weight (suitable for old computers), FAST (much faster than MS Internet Explorer), reliable and effectively implements many W3C standards. It is also free of the security issues associated with IE and has better privacy management. It is what Mozilla will become over the next few months.

Mozilla Thunderbird (email client only)

Mozilla Thunderbird makes e-mailing safer, faster and easier than ever before with the industry's best implementations of features such as intelligent spam filters, a built-in spell checker, extension support and much more.

Mozilla 1.7

Mozilla has an excellent Internet Browser, Mail Client, Address book and web page editor. It has many of the features of Mozilla-Firefox & Mozilla-Thunderbird plus a cuple of others and they are all bundled into one application. This makes it simple to install but heavier on your computer's resources.

Mozilla was the foundation for Netscape Communicator 6 (Netscape Communicator is no longer being developed) It works exactly the same (only improved) as Netscape Comunicator, with all the same apps. It also works the same as Microsoft Internet Explorer, Outlook/Outlook Express & Front Page. However it doesn't have the security issues or instability that often comes with Microsoft packages.

It is easy to convert your email over to Mozilla if you are running Outlook/Outlook Express, Eudora and Netscape 4.0 and has a good help manual.

Open Office (like MS Office™)

OpenOffice is a MS Office equivelant (only lacking a MS Access equivelant). It has great MS Word & PowerPoint compatibility (I'm unsure about its MS Excell compatibility). As a free alternative to MS Office it is awsome, however we've had problems with it occasionally crashing (no worse than MS Word) the big issues is with people using OOWriter (MS Word equivelant) and not saving the files they create in an appropriately compatible format. The problems all occured with previous releases and we haven't been able to test the current version.

OpenOffice 1.1.1 needs a full version of Java Runtime Environment to be able to utilize all it's features. Unfortunately at the time I produced this CD I couldn't work out how/where to download it.

Putty (Win SSH client and other stuff)

PuTTY is a free implementation of Telnet and SSH for Win32 platforms, along with an xterm terminal emulator.

WinPT (Windows Privacy Tool Kit)

Windows Privacy Tools (WinPT) is a collection of multilingual applications for digital encryption and signing of content. WinPT is GnuPG-based, compatible with OpenPGP compliant software (like PGP) and free for commercial and personal use under the GPL.

WinSCP like FileZilla but smaller/simpler.

WinSCP is an open source SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol) and SCP (Secure CoPy) client for Windows using SSH (Secure SHell). Its main function is safe copying of files between a local and a remote computer. Beyond this basic function, WinSCP manages some other actions with files.

Zinf (open source WinAmp clone)

The Zinf audio player is a simple, but powerful audio player for Linux and Win32. It supports MP3, Ogg/Vorbis, WAV and Audio CD playback, SHOUTcast/Icecast HTTP streaming, RTP streaming, a powerful music browser, theme support and a download manager.