You need to get your work done and at the same time stay up to date with the latest technology and trends, but these days who wants to spend big money upgrading their office software?

Fortunately you can now set up your office with all of the software you need to stay productive without spending any money.

Sounds like a gimmick? Not at all. Today high quality open source, free software, maintained by communities of software developers and companies from around the world is available that can seamlessly replace all of the high cost applications that you need for your small business or home office. Below are the essential free software packages that I use daily and would recommend for any small business or home office user.

Firefox - Open Source web browser from Mozilla Foundation. Up to date and more secure. Includes a fast JavaScript engine and support for the latest web coding standards. It's excellent feature set goes far beyond tabbed browsing and pop-up blocking. Add-ons allow you to customize and extend the usefulness of the browser.

Open Office - Complete office productivity suite from Sun. This is a direct and compatible replacement for Microsoft Office. It includes all of the essential tools you need to run your office including: word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing, and database applications. Unless you have some specialized need why spend hundreds of dollars to get the same result?

Thunderbird - Desktop email client from Mozilla Foundation. Thunderbird provides excellent spam filtering and html rendering capabilities and includes a calendar and task list. It supports POP and IMAP email servers.

GIMP - Full featured image editing software. Why spend hundreds of dollars for Photoshop when you can easily handle everyday image editing tasks with free software? GIMP includes the ability to handle layered images and supports transparency, gradients, and layer masks.

By the way all of the above products will run on Windows, Mac OS, or Linux.

Speaking of Linux why not be adventurous, skip the Windows 7 upgrade, and give the new version of Ubuntu a try? This is one of the most usable and accessible versions of Linux available for the desktop. If you are are currently running Windows you can install the operating system using Wubi without touching your current Windows installation or partitioning your hard disk. Ubuntu runs great on older hardware so you can skip the cost of upgrading your system along with the $120+ upgrade tax from Microsoft. And by the way Ubuntu comes complete with all of the software you need to be productive right away.