Wow....Look at GIMP!!!!!

As Krogg so articulately informed you, I am the proud owner of a new computer. One of the wonderful things about the current state of the internet is that there is a broad array of excellent quality software available for FREE! Here's a list of some of my favorite free software finds:

GIMP: this is basically free Photoshop. It certainly doesn't have all the most advanced features that you'd find in the latest version of CS5 (and I admit, content-aware-fill looks friggin' amazing), but I'm very impressed with its features! For instance, let's say you wanted to make a picture of a "giant unicorn with a chicken on its saddle that is goring R2D2," you can totally make that using GIMP! Check this out:

Open Office: this is basically free Microsoft Office. Again, it doesn't have the same powerful features you'd find in the latest version of MS Office, but honestly who needs them? A word processor is a word processor, and spreadsheet is a spreadsheet, and the ones available in Open Office are more than up to the task.

Skype: I know I'm not exactly bringing any major news to anybody here, but you can VIDEO CHAT on the INTERNET these days  (see Jim Carey: "we've landed on the moon!")! Holy moly! How cool is Skype? Cool.

Next up there's pretty much anything that Google makes (or should I say owns).

Picasa: this is a great way to organize your photos on your hard drive. It's got some basic photo editing abilities, and it's really good at integrating with your online Picasa/Google account. Oh, and if you don't have a Google account, I'm really sorry for you; you must be "some sort of toothless hillbilly living in some hillbilly shack somewhere." 

Google Earth: this is Google maps but much much cooler. You can not only see the satellite image, but all the buildings and terrain are rendered in 3D. The best part is being able to tilt the point of view, so it feels like you're flying around a real place. The first time I navigated my way through the Seattle skyline, it made the skin on the back of my neck stand up it was so cool!

Sketchup: this is some really cool 3D modeling software. It allows you to easily create 3D models of pretty much anything you can think of. I'm not sure exactly what I'll do this this ability, but it's still cool to render objects in three dimensions. Maybe some day I'll need to build a book shelf, who knows. You can also download pre-made models from a library of thousands and thousands of templates available online -- from furniture, to giant buildings.

If you have any other cool free software ideas for me, I'm all ears!