Buying software can quickly become a pretty big investment, especially for small companies just starting out. Of course, since a few years there is the possibility to use online applications that will replace a whole bunch of text or image editing softwares. However I do not recommend this for a professionnal use, all of your data being retained by large companies.

Now let’s take a look at a few alternatives for common softwares:
OpenOffice: The most famous replacement for Microsoft Office, does just about anything you can do with the Richmond company’s software and even does it better sometimes.
PDFCreator: Simple alternative for Acrobat Professional. It doesn’t have as many functionnalities, but it works very well for simple PDF creation, who said you need more?
Paint.net: Do you really need a professional image editing software like Photoshop just to resize, crop or grayscale pictures? Except if you are in the design industry the answer will be no. So why not give a shot to Paint.net?
FileZilla: Probably my favourite FTP solution. Why pay to get a software that will not be as good as this one?
OpenWorkbench: Handling your projects… freely!
This is of course only a glimpse of the existing variety in OpenSource softwares. Excellent sites exist with full lists to find alternatives to paid software (like http://www.osalt.com/ ), support great projects and ultimately save money.