Well again I think im going a little off topic on this one but just wanted to mention a few freebies that have really helped me in one way or the other.

Firstly I suppose I cant go very far without talking about DSL (damn small Linux) this a great lite operating system which I have loaded on a very old laptop at work with a decent battery (XP chugged like nobodies business on it). It now boots in a real quick time and gives me access to everything I need for configuring switches, routers, modem routers and the like. because the laptop is old it has a com port built into it (which is quickly disappearing on more recent ones). It would also be a good general OS for a creaky old PC that you just need for general surfing and document creation. Details can be found here.



Another great freebie is clamwin anti virus. This is originally a linux anti virus package but has also been ported onto windows, it provides a very stable and reliable anti virus solution that works on all versions of windows from 2000 upwards (really good for a test lab environment).

Another great thing I have found is a site called quidco, which is basically a cashback site. It has a ton of online shops on it and for the sake of clicking through a link to the site from quidco even if its only a few pennies you might as well earn the cash back. Quite often the offers are reasonably generous, for example I bought a item from crucial with about a £25 value, and I got £1.50 back from that.