Mozilla Thunderbird®

is an email client similar to Outlook and Apple Mail.

Now in it's 3rd version it features tabbed email, one click address book and a log of recent activity.

It is easier than ever to set up, simply enter in your email address and Mozilla Thunderbird automatically sets up your account.

It has been updated to fit in with the look and feel of Windows and Snow Leopard.

Spotify

is a streaming music program that allows almost instant listening to lots of songs (around 3 million with more added often!) in an elegant software interface. Available for Windows, Mac and Linux (under Wine) Imagine iTunes but with lots of tracks already in your library.

The library of songs is huge and has everything from The Killers, Lily Allen and Kings of Leon to pop music old and new, 70s/80s classics and all types of rock, r n b and dance music.

Users can choose between a Free version that has adverts or a Premium version that has higher sound quality and no advertising.

There are lots of 3rd party community add-ons and resources such as plugins and widgets to integrate it with other services such as Twitter.

Playlists can be shared between users too, stay tuned for some wotson4u created playlists and feel free to share your own playlists to Questionnaire@wotson4u.org.uk and we will put them on the site.

Audacity

is an audio editing program similar to Wavelab or Sound Forge.

Available for Windows, Mac OS and Linux operating systems

GIMP

is an image manipulation program with features comparable to the likes of Photoshop. It also allows you to draw from scratch using vectors and paintbrushes.

Available for Windows, Mac OS and Linux operating systems.

OpenOffice.org

Want to do your word processing, create a spreadsheet or design a presentation but don't want to fork out for Microsoft Office? Give Open Office a try. Now in its 3rd version this has lots of features that match that of the Microsoft Office program you probably use at school or work (it even allows you to open and save files in the Microsoft format) Best of all it is free and has a variety of user created templates and add ons.

Available for Windows, Mac OS and Linux operating systems

Kompozer

is a WYSIWYG web page design program. It allows you to create professional looking websites with minimal knowledge of HTML and CSS. Users of Dreamweaver should easily get to grips with the interface.

Available for Windows, Mac OS and Linux operating systems.

Linux

Think that Linux operating systems are just for geeks and computer whizzkids? Think again!! Linux operating systems are usually free to download or very cheap to purchase on a CD. Lots of Linux distributions allow you to run them straight from a cd or dvd so you can test them out before installing them and some even let you install them from within Windows. Also they come bundled with loads of free applications such as mp3 players, media players, graphic manipulation programs, multitrack recording software, video editing programs and word processing and spreadsheet programs.

There are so many Linux operating systems out there (called Distributions) there is not one that is better than another, you should try a few out by running them straight off a cd or dvd before you decide to install one. But Fedora, Ubuntu and Mandriva are good ones to start with and Linux Format is a great resource for everything Linux.