This week I'm going to continue with my list of Open Source software alternatives to save you a few bucks. Last week I talked about some of the biggies, Open Office to replace Microsoft Office, GIMP and Paint.NET to replace Photoshop, and some great music tools.

Let's turn to desktop email/calendar clients.

•Thunderbird, http://www.mozillamessaging.com/thunderbird/, is an excellent and easy to use email client. We use it here at the paper as a replacement for outlook. The only major drawback over Outlook is the lack of a calendaring feature. Otherwise, we have had a great deal of luck with this application.

•Sunbird, also from Mozilla at www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/, is their calendar/to-do application. It can integrate with Thundbird with the add-on, Lightning.

•If you are looking for a more perfect clone of Outlook, complete with calendaring and tasks, and are willing to take on a bit of a challenge, consider Evolution, which was primarily written for Linux, but has recently been made available for Windows. It requires a bit more tweaking and would be recommended for those with better than average computer skills for the installation. It can be downloaded at www.dipconsultants.com/evolution.

•For the Mac, iCal, is a great and free tool, however, there is currently no Windows version of this client. My recommendation is a Google Calendar. Not only can you share your calendar, you can also sync it with iCal on your iPhone or with your G1 Google Phone, but it also integrates with the rest of your Google account

Antivirus/Anti-spyware:

•ClamWin, www.clamwin.com/, is just about the best open source antivirus tool available. It is updated regularly to handle new viruses that are reported.

•Search and Destroy, www.search-and-destroy.com/, is a great tool that really help to eliminate pop-ups, cookies and all the general nuisances that people try to infect you with.

•Spyware Blaster, http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html, helps to eliminate spyware and the tracking of your movements online.

•Though I'm loathe to admin it, Microsofts' Windows Defender, a free download from Microsoft.com, does a good job of eliminating security threats.

PDF creation and editing tools:

•PDFCreator, a simple tool that allows you to create PDFs from any application. Works smoothly and creates great PDFs. Download from http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/.

•Another great and easy to use PDF creator is PrimoPDF. The free version allows creation of PDFs, and for $90 you can upgrade to the full version which allows you to edit PDFs and complete and save forms. This is still cheaper than buying Acrobrat.

•If you are just looking to edit a PDF, or complete a PDF form, there are currently no open source desktop applications that do this for Windows. However, there is a website, http://www.pdfescape.com/, that you can upload your form to, complete it, then download the completed form. A bit of a pain, but at least you can do it without purchasing the full version of Adobe Acrobat.

•Also keep in mind that Open Office supports automatic creation of PDFs of any Open Office document.

CD/DVD burning:

•CD Burner XP, available from http://www.cdburnerxp.se/, allows you to burn CDs and DVDs quickly and easily. It supports all common medias and speeds, including LightScribe functionality. It can also burn audio CDs from MP3s.

•InfraRecorder, from http://infrarecorder.org/, duplicates all of the above functionality in a nice and simple to use interface. Both applications completely meet all CD and DVD burning needs you'll ever have.

Next week we'll look into audio and video conversion and editing, as well as DVD authoring to create your own movies.