If you buy a PC, the chances are that it will come ready-loaded with Microsoft products. You may think that they are free but their cost has already been included in the total price, driving up the bill you pay.

That isn’t to say that the Microsoft products are not good. They are. That’s why they dominate the market place with more than 90 percent of the world's computers running Microsoft software. It isn’t just a matter of successful marketing.

But there are alternatives and if you have the time and energy to look around, or the inclination to save money, you can find a lot of other options that could save you hundreds of pounds.

Governments and large corporations are looking to alternative systems, as the price of user-licences becomes a real issue. The same applies to individuals.

Many governments are examining the Linux operating system, which was created more than a decade ago by Linus Torvalds, a student at Finland’s University of Helsinki. But in the intervening years it has been upgraded, updated and made more sophisticated by a worldwide army of programmers.

What has made Linux such a success is that the code on which it operates is “open source.” That means that any enthusiast can look at it and modify it, as long as they agree to share their changes with everyone else.

With corporations like Microsoft, code is a closely guarded secret surrounded by numerous copyrights, trademarks and other legal restrictions.

But software from Microsoft and others comes at a fee - and for both the individual user and even the largest companies, the cost of user licences is expensive. Linux can be a low-cost, or for individuals a free alternative.

The positive result of that is that software developers all around the world are devoting their technical experience to making Linux-based products better and better.

Many governments are also motivated by the idea of open source software, vastly reducing costs and Germany, Israel, China and the UK are all working with open code. The benefits to developing nations like India, where the programming standards are already extremely high, are enormous. According to the experts a history of having to make do with little has given emerging nations the creativity to produce something of value out of nothing. Linux fits the bill.

In Britain the Office of Government Commerce is sponsoring the trial of open source software in nine government departments and local authorities.

Most PC's come ready bundled with Microsoft software so there's little incentive to hunt out alternatives. But don’t forget that pre-installed software isn't free - it's factored into the end cost. Add this to the limited choice of 'unbundled' PCs on the market and the perceived notion that it's easier to buy a package that comes with everything you need and it's not hard to see why Microsoft has such a large market share.

For less than £10 “select: Word Processing” is an easy-to-use package for beginners that contains everything you need to prepare, edit and present letters, reports, quotations, memos, mailings and newsletters. It can read Microsoft Word documents and create a PDF file.

StarOffice 7 can be a useful alternative, as it claims to offer 90 percent of the functionality at a fraction of the cost of MS Office, which costs hundreds of pounds. As an alternative to Microsoft Office, WordPerfect Office may be the right solution for small businesses – it is instinctive to operate and contains equivalents to Word, Excel and PowerPoint. And if you are building a PC yourself or ordering one from a firm that builds to whatever specification you require, you don’t have to use Internet Explorer. There are free browsers such as Opera, Mozilla and Netscape Navigator, which do the same job.

Eudora is a recommended free email service that has been favourably tested.

Recently, Microsoft Exchange 5.5 was affected by some reliability and security issues. The Sun Infrastructure Solution provides reliable, scalable and secure email, calendaring, and instant messaging at less that half the price.

There is even a site - www.livingwithoutmicrosoft.org - which aims to provide accurate information about non-Microsoft software, but you can find out more by looking for newsgroups where enthusiasts exchange free help and advice.