So, we thought we had the money to buy the Adobe Creative Suite for our laptops, but due to some unforeseen circumstances, we don’t have it. It’s about $20,000 to get 120 licenses for it, and while that raises a larger question about the sustainability of 1:1 — I figure between the Adobe Suite and Final Cut Express, you’re talking about a minimum of $900 of extra software per machine — I’m not interested in delving into that question right now.

Our machines have Microsoft Office and the iLife ’06 suite, but that’s the extent of the proprietary software right now.

Instead, I’m looking for free (Open Source would be good, but not necessary) or low-cost publishing (web, desktop, graphic) solutions that work on OSX. I’ve found some leads so far, but I’m always open to more.

Here are a few of the tools we’re looking at:

Google Earth
Google SketchUp
ArtRage
NVU
ProfCast

Anyone have some other good suggestions?