historyhelp.ca supports the open source movement. A fact of life for students is that computers have become essential tools. That does not however mean that you need to pay for the latest versions of Windows, MacOS, MS Office, etc. There are many excellent free, legal and community-developed alternatives. These are just a few of the open source projects I use every day:

Operating System
If you want to move away from Microsoft or Apple operating systems, try Linux. There are many distributions available. Ubuntu is an excellent, user-friendly one: www.ubuntu.com

Word Processor / Office Suite
OpenOffice LibreOffice does everything that you will need to write essays, and much more. It is also completely free and open source: LibreOffice.org
Note: LibreOffice is an offshoot of OpenOffice that promises to be more actively developed.

Web Development
This website has been built using Drupal: drupal.org

The historyhelp.ca blog has been built using Wordpress: wordpress.org