Jarte Word Processor

Jarte is on the face of it simple and no more automated than is strictly necessary, but there's a lot of very neat tricks under the hood. The freeware version is very feature rich, upgraded to the full paid version which is cheap and you can use it on all the household's PCs with a single licence.

Its "clickless" interface can be helpful to someone with limited hand function.

http://www.jarte.com/

SimpleOCR

Accurately convert that paper document into editable electronic text for use in any application including Word.
Not only is SimpleOCR up to 99% accurate, it is 100% free.


SimpleOCR Website

StarDict - Dictionary

You can find meanings of words and even look up thesauruses using StarDict. It pulls up its search from various dictionaries available online as well as the ones you install offline. It can be run in scan mode which monitors your highlighted words and displays its meaning in a tooltip.


StarDict - Dictionary

In Pictures tutorials

Really simple, straight-forward tutorials on how to do the basics in select software programs. Programs covered include Microsoft Office (2003 and 2007), Open Office, Dreamweaver and Photoshop. Also PHP, Perl and MySQL have tutorials.

The tutorials are very basic and easy to read and understand. The pictures are on point and uncluttered.


In Pictures tutorials

Alternative to Visio

Dia is roughly inspired by the commercial Windows program 'Visio', though more geared towards informal diagrams for casual use.

It can be used to draw many different kinds of diagrams. It currently has special objects to help draw entity relationship diagrams, UML diagrams, flowcharts, network diagrams, and many other diagrams.

Dia homepage

Foxit Reader

Foxit Reader is a free reader for PDF documents. You can view and print PDF documents with it.

The download size is around 3MB, so you can download it quickly. It doesn't need any lengthy installation, so you can start to run it as soon as you can download it.

And it starts up immediately, so you don't need to wait the annoying "Welcome" screen to disappear.

Foxit Reader Homepage

Sumatra PDF

Sumatra PDF is a slim, free, open-source PDF viewer for Windows.

Sumatra has a minimalistic design. Simplicity has a higher priority than a lot of features. It's small and starts up very fast.It's designed for portable use: it's just one file with no external dependencies so you can easily run it from external USB drive.

Homepage: http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/

GNU Aspell

GNU Aspell is a Free Open Source spell checker. It can either be used as a library or as an independent spell checker. Its main feature is that it does a superior job of suggesting possible replacements for a misspelled word than just about any other spell checker out there for the English language.

Homepage 

Lotus Symphony

IBM Lotus Symphony is a freeware office software suite featuring: a word processor - IBM Lotus Symphony Documents, a spreadsheet program - IBM Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets, and a presentation program - IBM Lotus Symphony Presentations.
Lotus Symphony is based on the Open Document Format (ODF) standard-which means you’re not locked into proprietary file formats, software licensing agreements and upgrades. IBM Lotus Symphony can also write Portable Document Format (PDF) files.

Homepage

NeoOffice

NeoOffice is a full-featured set of office applications (including word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing, and database programs) for Mac OS X. Based on the OpenOffice.org office suite, NeoOffice has integrated dozens of native Mac features and can import, edit, and exchange files with other popular office programs such as Microsoft Office.

Homepage

Free fonts

SimplytheBest Fonts

Browse through the alphabetical font listings or the font categories to view the available free fonts. Each font has a full preview page with proprietary details. Most fonts are freeware and as such free to use for webmasters and hobbyists. If you wish to use them commercially, you may have to register them first. Make sure to see if the font is freeware (for both personal and commercial use) or commercial (i.e. you have to always purchase it to use it). Registration information can always be found in the font file itself (right click and Properties in browser), the readme.txt file attached to the font file, or at the link destination if the author has a Web site.
Link


Freeware Fonts

The typefaces on this page are ones that we want you to use and enjoy free of charge. Use them in your personal and commercial projects, websites, logos or whatever else you are designing.
Link

WORDWEB

WordWeb is a one-click English thesaurus and dictionary for Windows that can look up words from in almost any program. It works off-line, but can also look up words in web references such as the Wikipedia encyclopedia. Features of the free version include:

Definitions and synonyms Proper nouns Related words Pronunciations

150 000 root words 120 000 synonym sets Look up words in almost any program

The software has a full dictionary and thesaurus for American, British, Canadian, Australian, Indian, and global English.

Link

Free Spell-Checker

TinySpell is an impressive little utility that checks individual words on a correct-as-you-type basis, from clipboard contents or from a query box. The provided 110,00 dictionary is not enormous but more than adequate for normal usage and you can also add words to the dictionary as needed. Resource usage seems modest and the product can be easily enabled/disenabled from the taskbar icon. It has one odd feature; the dictionary has both American and English spelling so words like "color" and "colour" both show as correct. Overall, it's quite a solid product and an excellent companion to WordWeb.

TinySpell features include:
Checks spelling in any Windows application
Checks spelling on-the-fly (alerts if the last typed word was misspelled)
Checks spelling of text that is copied to the clipboard
Allows you to specify tinySpell disabled or enabled applications (new in v1.6)
Optionally beeps on error (beep sound can be easily set to any wav file)
Opens replacements list with a simple mouse click or a hot-key
Optionally copies the selected replacement word to the clipboard
Optionally inserts the selected replacement word into the document
Allows you to add words to the dictionary
Easy Enable/Disable
Uses little system resources
Operating Systems Supported: 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP/2003 Server/Vista

http://tinyspell.m6.net/

AbiWord

Replace Word with this multiplatform, free alternative that covers the basics.

Can't afford Microsoft Office or would just like an alternative when all you need is a good, solid word processor? Then you're in luck.

If you've got straightforward word processing chores, including inserting and handling images, you'll want this freebie. It features a simple straightforward interface; you won't need to spend hours trying to wrangle your way through ribbons or multi-level menus.

What you need is right in front of you, icons and menus across the top of the page, with no clutter. You'll most likely be surprised by the amount of features this free word processor packs in. For example, it handles mail merges, will insert pages numbers, date and time, and other auto text, and has some very nice tools for handling tables. Use this program enough, and you'll find that it's not just a money-saver, but a time-saver as well, because of its utter simplicity.

Link

Microsoft Excel

Do you need help with Excel?
This site has a number of tips from General to VBA. You might be able to find something you were wondering or needed to know.
link

WhatTheFont?

Ever wanted to find a font just like the one used by certain publications, corporations, or ad campaigns? Well now you can, using our WhatTheFont font recognition system. Upload a scanned image of the font and instantly find the closest matches in our database.
http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/

ieSpell

ieSpell is a free Internet Explorer browser extension that spell checks text input boxes on a webpage. It should come in particularly handy for users who do a lot of web-based text entry (e.g. web mails, forums, blogs, diaries). Even if your web application already includes spell checking functionality, you might still want to install this utility because it is definitely much faster than a server-side solution. Plus you get to store and use your personal word list across all your applications, instead of maintaining separate ones on each application.
The program installs as a new button in the IE toolbar (as well as a new menu item under "Tools") - after filling in a form, just hit the ieSpell button and it pops up a dialog, similar to the MS Word spell check

VoyCabulary

VoyCabulary makes the words on any webpage into links so you can look them up in a dictionary or other word-reference-site of your choice, by simply clicking on the words.

Anytime you find yourself reading a webpage with words you wish to look-up, try running the page through VoyCabulary and just click on the words! For instance, if you are reading a page with complicated words, like when reading Medical pages, or perhaps reading a page in Spanish and frequently need to look-up the English equivalents, see if VoyCabulary can help you out!

Sound complicated? It's actually quite simple, just put in a URL to your favorite website, or type in a sentence. Once you're at the page, click on any word to look it up - It's that easy!

Orangoo Spell Check

Orangoo Spell Check lets you spell correct from any system or computer that has Internet access. Spell check in 27 languages. It partially uses the Google spell checker and Aspell, the code is free, you can use it in your own web applications. Your privacy is taken importantly - no text is logged.

Office Online File Converters and Viewers

With the help of converters and viewers from Office Online, you can share your Microsoft Office files with people who have different versions of Office programs, or even with people who don't have Office installed.

Converters allow you to open files created by people using different versions of your Office programs.

Viewers provide a means for people who don't have Office programs to see your work. You can provide them with the appropriate viewer along with your Office files.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/downloads/HA010449811033.aspx