I came to the conclusion that most of the everyday stuff that you see (maybe the Microsoft Office, the Image editing softwares ( adobe or corel), you can find a community of people developing a similar application that is cheap or you can download at no cost, except that you promote their product)
During my search I came upon the following:
1. GIMP 2 - the partial replacement to Adobe Photoshop. Basically it can replace most of the basic features that Photoshop is capable of, like mixing images or editing the photo. This software is very similar to Photoshop and has many (but not all) the capabilties. It is free to download website: http://www.gimp.org/
2. Google Docs - Its the website made by google that has many of the capabilties of your Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint). Its capabilities are similar to the 2003 version, but Google is slowly added its own unique capabilities. Free. You need to create a google account to use it . http://docs.google.com
3. Google Sketchup - A drawing software that is similar but much easier to use than the Autocad. There are 2 verisons: a Free and a professional (paid) one. It comes with its own Huge Library of 3d drawings made by volunteers, which should grow as more people download their software. http://sketchup.google.com/
There are hundreds more free software, some reliable, others that could crash your hard drive, that you can get with a quick search thru Google. If you're careful, you should be able to replace most of it thru an open-source software that runs just as good as the commercial versions.
I always wonder what kinds of new industries you can come up with, now that computing speed is getting pretty quick. Basically, backyard animation or basic product design could be refined with these software.
Those the desktop cant handle, it could be delegated to some website that provides you the added processing speed, and they could just charge you on an hourly or monthly basis. Which is eventually what is happening now. But that's another story to tell some time in the Future.
