And, in response to the recent release of the Google Pack, our friends at Lifehacker have released their own collection of software they consider necessary, the lifehacker pack. And wouldn’t ya know it, much of it mirrors the Open CD. But we have to hand it to them, that VLC is one bad piece of — shut yo mouth — I’m talkin’ bout VLC, baby. We can dig it.

Audacity is new to us, though we see it pimped in both. We have been traveling with Total Recorder for a few years and have loved the heck out of it. And its 10 dollar price range was none too bad, either! But we will give Audacity a try.

Faststone looks interesting to us, as well. But we wonder if we will love it more than Picasa.

Perhaps the most interesting software there is 7-zip, which would be a good WinZip  replacement. We don’t think we’ve ever bought a WinZip license and have been using their “evaluation versions” for years. It would be nice to go “legal” with someone who doesn’t care if we’re not laying our money down.