For the personal computer user, you have a choice!  Advertising is a powerful tool, and most people will make a choice based on brand recognition, including software.  Microsoft sells by volume and advertises on print, and in media.  Businesses and personal computer users are told that a software package is better because it is compatible with operating system X, it is more secure, it has more features, is easier to use, and for your money they will invest their time into supporting it's product so that it will continue to do at least what it does now.  For your money. 

Flip the coin and you have Open Source software communities.  They have very little or no advertising dollars so their success is by word of mouth and quality of their product.  What they do have is software that will be compatible with operating system X, is more secure, has more features, is easier to use, and for your loyalty they will invest their time into supporting a product so that it will continue to do at least what it does now. For your loyalty. 

Some open source software have a larger development staff than it's competing retail version.  Some even have developers which work for a retail software packages.  So how do they make money?  If they need money it can come from contributions, investors, CD's and support sales, but it is not the money that makes the products successful it's the quality.

If you have a personal computer at home and you need software that performs a specific task, have trial versions of software, shareware, or are debating on an operating system upgrade which will require more software purchases you should at least consider Open Source.

Here are some of my favorites:

OpenOffice will replace Microsoft Office.

Is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages.

OpenOffice.org 2 contains all the office software you need, in one single package. You don't have to worry which version to install: one installation program provides everything. The installation also includes features which some expensive rivals do not - for example, the ability to create .pdf files when you want to guarantee what the recipient sees on their computer. There is also a growing range of extensions: additional features that any developer can provide. OpenOffice.org releases release software several times a year so you can take advantage of new features as quickly as possible.

A large collection of templates, clipart, and plugins are available to make the software work in ways you may have not even thought about.

Paint.net will replace Photoshop or or equivalent imaging software.

Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. An active and growing online community provides friendly help, tutorials, and plugins.

VLC media player will replace all existing media players.

VLC media player - originally named VideoLAN Client - is a flexible media player available for virtually any operating system including portal/handheld computers. VLC plays all of the common media formats both video and audio - and plays you DVDs and today's popular DivX and MPEG4 movies. Most streaming media is support as well including Windows Media (wmv) and QuickTime. Advanced features include playing media directly off ISO files and skinable GUI. VLC is also available as a firefox plug-in and as an ActiveX component - making it simple to view any embedded video format through your web-browser.

Pidgin will replace all of your instant messaging programs.

Pidgin is an instant messenger (IM) application that covers multiple protocols - including (but not limited to) AIM, ICQ, MSN, IRC, Jabber, Novell GroupWise Messenger and Lotus Sametime. These protocols can be used simultaneously to provide communication across the different networks. Additional features include file transfer, away messages and typing notification. A number of plug-ins are also available to enrich Pidgin's feature set.

  ClamWin will replace Norton or equivalent antivirus program.

ClamWin Free Antivirus comes with an easy installer and open source code. You may download and use it absolutely free of charge. It features:
High detection rates for viruses and spyware; Scanning Scheduler; Automatic downloads of regularly updated Virus Database.  Standalone virus scanner and right-click menu integration to Microsoft Windows Explorer; Addin to Microsoft Outlook to remove virus-infected attachments.

CamStudio will replace Camtasia Studio.

CamStudio is an open source screencast application cabable of capturing both audio and video directly of your PC screen - and store it for later playback. This is great for demonstrating how different applications, websites, etc. work and how to use their features. CamStudio outputs AVI files but is able to convert these to macromedia flash files (swf), so that the screencasts can easily be used on any website. Advanced features include adding of captions, video-in-video e.g. for narrator and CamStudio's own loss-less codec, which provide sharp images while keeping the filesize to a minimum.

InfraRecorder will replace Nero or similar CD / DVD burning software.

InfraRecorder is an easy to use CD and DVD burner application. It supports virtually all different formats including rewritable disc, multi-session disc and dual-layer DVDs. Also audio CDs can be created with just a few simple drag'n drops in InfraRecorder.
Other important features include disc copying, audio cd ripping and ISO generation and burning (image formats supported: ISO and BIN/CUE). InfraRecorder is available in more than 20 languages - and the 64-bit version runs on Microsoft Vista.

7-Zip will replace all archiving, and compression software.

7-Zip is a file archiver with high compression ratio. It supports the following formats for packing/unpacking: 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR - and the following for unpacking only: RAR, CAB, ARJ, LZH, CHM, Z, CPIO, RPM and DEB. When using 7z format 7-Zip also support AES-256 encryption. With its windows style file manager and its integration into the Microsoft Windows shell.

GParted will replace Partition Magic.

GParted is an open source partition manager also known as the Gnome Partition Editor application. It is actualy a LiveCD/LiveUSB that allows you to boot directly into GParted when you need it - independent of the operating system you run. The main task of GParted is to allow managing partitions without destroying the content already on them. GParted support the following filesystems: ext2, ext2, fat, fat16, fat32, ntfs, hfs, hfs+, ufs, xfs, reiserfs, reiser4, jfs and linux-swap. Most of these filesystems can be manipulated (grow, shrink, copy) with a few exceptions.

Firefox and Thunderbird will replace any browser and mail application.

Firefox is an advanced browser built with its roots in the old Netscape browser. Today Firefox offers tabbed browsing, live bookmarks, many search extensions and many other extensions and toolbars. The support for Firefox by commercial companies is growing - and this is clearly seen by the number of extension/toolbars they develop.

Thunderbird is a full-featured open source email client which provides an excellent open source alternative to all commercial email clients. Thunderbird has a wide list of features of which some are: support for POP and IMAP, built-in RSS support and spell checking. Thunderbird also has an integrated usenet news reader. More advanced features of Thunderbird include: Junk mail (spam) filtering and protection from phishing. And finally the user-interface is completely customizable.

Grisbi will replace Money or Quicken.

Grisbi is open source personal accounting software for practically any platform/operating system. The project strives to provide simple and easy to use software for managing your accounts. Grisbi lets you keep track of all transactions on your accounts. Grouping of expenses makes it easy to see of you are using too much money according to your budget for a certain category. All of this can even be done for multiple users of the software and with any number of currencies.

As a bonus here are some great additions to make your free software work beyond your expectations.

K-Lite Codec Pack is a collection of codecs and related tools. Codecs are required to encode and/or decode (play) audio and video. The K-Lite Codec Pack is designed as a user-friendly solution for playing all your movie files. With the K-Lite Codec Pack you should be able to play 99% of all the movies that you download from the internet.

Firefox extensions are generally used to add functions to the browser. Examples of functions which an extension might add include RSS readers, bookmark organizers, toolbars (for example, the Wikipedia editor toolbar), website-specific client programs, FTP, e-mail, mouse gestures, proxy server switching, or debugging tools. Many Firefox extensions implement features formerly part of the Mozilla Suite, such as the ChatZilla IRC client and a calendar.

Paint.Net plugins add image adjustments, effects, and support for additional file types. For instance, a DirectDraw Surface file type plugin, and an Ink Sketch and Soften Portrait effect were added to Paint.NET.  Many plugins have been produced; such as Shape3D, which renders a 2D drawing into a 3D shape. Some plugins expand on the functionality that comes with Paint.NET, such as Curves+ and Sharpen+.

There you go.  This is just a very small sample of what is available.  More than likely if you have purchased a piece of software there is a free version available also.  Give Open Source software a chance, you may be surprised.  You will most definitely benefit from the quality, and the extra cash in your pocket you can now use to buy a larger hard drive, or more RAM.

If you have any questions about any of these products, or would like to know if a specific Open Source software product exists drop me a note in the feedback section.  If you haven't already seen the link for free PC games go check it out.