Software to Buy (in progress....)

Office Productivity

Microsoft Office

Buy 2000 version. Love it or hate it, it is the de facto standard. For best interoperability between offices, its the program to get.

Most used programs within this are Word, Excel.

Web Page Production

For this, I would recommend Macromedia Dreamweaver. Its the best and most advanced web site design software out there. Yet its very easy to use for even novices. It has a way to view multiple files and pages that other web page design packages don't. The educational price for this I think is about $99. If you want something cheaper and lower end try Netscape's Composer (part of the Communicator suite) This is availble at www.netscape.com. Then click Browsers. This porgram is very good for simple web page work, but does have some quirky behavior due to bugs in it that make me reccomend DreamWeaver more strongly. Many ask about Microsoft's Front Page. I shy away from this because it has a lot of bells and whistles that rely on your using a Microsoft Server to host your pages. So its more complicated than it needs to be.