It is a common myth that the more expensive an item or service is the better it is. In the software world most expensive programs has a free counter part.
Free alternatives to Adobe Photoshop
“At the point this article was created, Adobe Photoshop CS3 still cost about USD $649 per copy. I think it’s safe to say that not everyone will afford to get a copy or willing to get a copy if all one need to do is just basic image editing stuff. That’s probably one of the main reason why there’s still a fairly large crowd out there actively looking for free alternatives to Photoshop to help them in their daily basic design jobs. If you are not going into advance image editing, you should know that there’s always free software out there capable to perform what Photoshop can.” More
Keynote is a free note taking program ideal for students and teachers
“KeyNote is used by screenwriters to draft screenplays, by medical doctors to keep patient databases, by developers to store source code snippets – and to everyone it serves as a place to put all the random pieces of information that have no particular structure of relationship to other data, and do not fit easily in task-specific applications such as word-processors, databases or spreadsheets. As you use KeyNote, it will tend to grow on you and every day you will discover more ways to use it.”
This page lists its features while you can download it from here.
Free Star Office
Word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, and more. Very similar to MS Office. Download it from here.
Free video editors
Read this and this review of free video editors.
You can’t afford Dreamweaver?
No problem! Many free alternative exist. ”KompoZer is a free complete web authoring system that combines web file management and easy-to-use WYSIWYG web page editing. KompoZer is designed to be extremely easy to use, making it ideal for non-technical computer users who want to create an attractive, professional-looking web site without needing to know HTML or web coding.”
You find Adobe Reader to be too slow?
Try Foxit Reader for Windows.
If you’re interested in a program like Keynote (affordable substitution for OneNote), you should check out NoteScribe, which is a great note software. It also appears that Keynote has shut down and not been updated in quite awhile.
NoteScribe goes beyond note-taking by allowing users to create and generate sources and bibliographies, share notes with other users, attach files to further supplement your notes, and contains an organizational calendar for maintaining a schedule and alerts for events.
Check it out at http://www.NoteScribe.net
Thank you for the comment!
It may not be expensive ($21 or $36), and you can try it before you buy, but it is not free.
Another note software that is very good, but also comes with a price tag for all versions except the most basic one is Treepad at http://www.treepad.com/.