Software recommendations
Here are some of our favourite things...
•A free substitute for Adobe Acrobat writer/editor - http://www.pdfill.com/pdf_tools_free.html
•An Open Source substitute for Winzip, WinRAR and similar compression programs - http://www.7-zip.org/
•An Open Source substitute for Adobe Photshop, PaintShop Pro and similar graphics programs - http://www.gimp.org/ - Windows binaries are avialble from http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/
•Windows file manager has never really changed since Windows 3.x and so moving and copying files from folders and/or drives is still too hard and too slow. There are numerous better alternatives which speed things up from a 'usability' perspective and our current favorite is Surf, which is Open Source, runs on Windows 7 fine and can be found here.