Nowadays Most People using an Open Source product called VNU which has a Windows version but it also has a version for the Macintosh and for Linux which I'm thinking about converting over to. Rather than paying for a package like Microsoft office I am using OpenOffice which is a free open source solution. OpenOffice has a lot more features than the standard Microsoft Office, it incorporates Adobe acrobat by letting you create PDF documents.I just upgraded my computer and gave my old one to my younger brother. Now this old computer has windows on it but knowing my brother if he ever gets a virus he will not be able to handle it.

Now another kind of software that is practically free is what is called freeware. The difference between open source and freeware is that the Freeware application has already been compiled and you are not able to modify it or even replicate the coding.If you want more information on what you can do with open source software they all follow a general license which if you do a search on a site like Google you will be able to find many references regarding this open license.