FREE. FREE. FREE. AND MOSTLY FREE.
Anti-virus software
Guess what, you do NOT have to purchase a virus scan software. If you have done so already, thats fine. I suggest downloading a free one anyway and when your renewal comes up for the purchased product, don't renew. Use the free one. I haven't purchased anti-virus software in years and my computer is clean.
Go here:
http://free.grisoft.com/doc/5390/us/frt/0?prd=aff
Set it to run every night.
Online virus scans
Panda online virus scan is quick and easy and excellent.
Go here:
http://www.pandasecurity.com/homeusers/solutions/activescan/
Anti-phishing software
Spy-bot. Download this software and run it once a week.
Go here:
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html
There are other free security products available, as well.
E-mail newsletter
My favorite is www.constantcontact.com
You can try it out for two months (if you have less than 100 email addresses on the list). The pricing depends on how many email addresses you send to. My church, allsaintsmobile.org only pays $14.99 a month. The Diocese pays $50 a month and will not move into the next pricing level until we hit 2500 recipients! Its a great deal.
Photo Tools
Picasa is free. Go to http://picasa.google.com/index.html
PDF Makers
To turn your word documents into a pdf, you don't have to spend $400 on Adobe Acrobat. I've tried several freebies, most are awkward and don't work great for me, but PDF995 works great if you don't mind seeing an advertisement each time you use. Doesn't bother me!
Go here:
http://www.pdf995.com/download.html
PDF to Word
Great discovery...
There are many of these types of free software. Just do a search.