You will be glad to hear I am not condoning or encouraging pirating software here....... just the opposite, but I do want to point out that there are ways of getting the software you need for everyday things for, well, for FREE.
A new breed of applications are starting to appear on the internet, and you do not have to pay for them.
It has been easy to find "FREEWARE" or low cost "SHAREWARE" programmes that you download, no matter whether you are a Windows, Mac or Linux user. Without doubt, some of these programmes have really well written, but generally they tend to be less ambitious, less rich, subsets of what people expect from commercial products.
So, putting aside worries such as spyware, virus etc etc (unless you are a Mac user, and I doubt you worry anyway), are these programmes any good for the day to day needs of, lets say word processing, or spreadsheets? The answer is - maybe. My experience of OpenOffice (http://www.openoffice.org/) has been good. On my Mac OpenOffice is slower that MicroSoft Office, but functionally (and more importantly compatibility) is really good.
This is not a review, more an awareness raising article, but these programmes are really worth looking at. What has happened more recently, and very much linked to the uptake of broadband, has been the arrival of web applications. These web applications are not downloaded, and you do your work online.
Nervous? Yes, I would be a year or two back, but broadband is now so good I cannot recall the last downtime. Downtime is not an option if your applications and storage are all on the internet!
So - take a look.