Even with student discounts, when you’re going to school it’s really hard to afford all of the high-end software programs used in the web development field. There are many free alternative programs out there that you can use on your home systems. Vinterstille provides an excellent round-up of free, alternative programs with descriptions, that you can download and use instead of the expensive Adobe and Macromedia applications. Note: that not all of these programs will work on PCs (Mac and Linux applications).

Speaking of Macs, I got a “new to me” Mac last night that I had ordered from eBay. It’s a small grape iMac that will allow me to check web sites as I’m developing and try out all of these cool Mac only programs I keep reading about. The base price of the little, grape, iMac was $150 (no shipping charges) for a 400mhz G3 with 128 mb of RAM,. The iMac came complete with a DVD drive, cables, a keyboard, and mouse. I had the memory maxed out to 768mb and that little iMac is running like a champ. While this is not a “state-of-the-art” Mac, I think it will serve me well for developing web pages and trying out applications and the price was good.

So the first article that I read was How to switch to Mac, an informative short article for those of us who are attempting to switch from a Windows environment to a Mac environment.

I found MacCast, which has great editorials, podcasts, and resources for the Mac.

Creative Mac offers news, tools and techniques for Macintosh creative professionals.

Then I was off to find some software for my Mac (preferrably free). Here are a few sites that I found that list “must have” Macintosh programs:

Brilliant Ignorance - Essential freeware for the Mac user

Madsen Blog - Indispensable Mac OS X Software

MacZealots - Top 10 shareware apps of 2005

John Hoke’s Asylum - Must have software for Mac OS X
What’s In Your Mac? - Favorite Mac applications from The Daily Dish

Lifehacker - Essential Mac Freebies - check their OS X section for more goodies.

MacSpecialist - Essential Mac Applications - be sure to read the comments for updated applications.

Pure Mac lists tons of Macintosh applications.

Apple.com - Mac OS X downloads - freeware, shareware, demos, and widgets

Wikipedia has a huge list of Macintosh software. The list is categorized and clicking a link will bring up a description of the application and a link to the developers site.

PimpMySafari - Bookmarklets, plugins…all things Safari.

Here are a few Macintosh magazines and other Mac resources:

MacWorld - Online version of the popular magazine.
Apple Developer Connection - Resources for the developer and designer.

If you don’t have a computer at home, you may want to consider one of these iMacs for developing and home use. Remember, if you do decide to go out and get yourself a used Mac for testing purposes it’s a great opportunity to try out some of the free, open source software like OpenOffice.