I am a big supporter of open source software. You just have to look down my posts to see that most of these pages use “free” software or sites. It is worth bearing in mind however, that you can get full versions of software packages for student and teacher prices. Have a look around the web before you buy the version bundled with this Christmas’ laptop, you can get a full version of office for less than £40 and that will cover two machines.

Check out dreamspark if you are planning to study computer science at university, it can give you a lot of software for no layout and this can be used to prepare for the courses you might undertake.