| Category | Commerical software | Free software | Operating Systems |
Notes |
| Scienific computation | Matlab | Octave | Windows/Mac OSX/Linux |
Octave requires a little effect to setup but its works just like Matlab and will save you a lot of money! You also need GNUPlot to make plots. Some binary downloads of Octave already come with GNUPlot, just be sure to check. Be sure to download all the octave-forge packages to get maximum compatiablity. |
| C++ IDE | Microsoft Visual Studio | Eclipse | Windows/Mac OSX/Linux |
Eclipse has a lot of plugins available, get the ones you need. |
| Word processing/Excel/Powerpoint | Microsoft Office | OpenOffice.org | Windows/Mac OSX/Linux |
Great alternative Office product. OpenOffice has most of the features in Microsoft Office. Requires X11 for Mac OSX. |
| | NeoOffice
 | Windows/Mac OSX/Linux |
NeoOffice is a java implementation of OpenOffice for MacOSX. Does not need X11! |
| Graphics | Adobe Photoshop | The Gimp | Windows/Mac OSX/Linux |
Requires X11 for Mac OSX. |