There is a fantastic range of free software availalbe to facilitate creativity. These are just a few of the popular open-source offerings.

	Audacity is a free, easy-to-use audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems. You can use Audacity to:Record live audio. Cut, copy, splice, and mix sounds together.Change the speed or pitch of a recording.And more!
	CamStudio is able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos (SWFs)
	PortableApps.com Suite™ is a complete collection of portable apps including a web browser, email client, office suite, calendar/scheduler, instant messaging client, antivirus, audio player, sudoku game, password manager, PDF reader, minesweeper clone, backup utility and integrated menu, all preconfigured to work portably. Just drop it on your portable device and you’re ready to go.
	GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages.
	OpenOffice is a piece of free software that can be used as an alternative to Microsoft Office, it is fully compatible with many different office software vendors and will work on almost any computer. OpenOffice is easy to install and use, not to mention full of exciting and usefull features.