Where did it start? Bye bye BlackBerry and hello HTC Desire, an Android phone. This led on to the following, liberating changes:

Google Chrome replacing Internet Explorer.
Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Contacts replacing Outlook.
Open Office replacing Microsoft Office.
Open Office Writer replacing Microsoft Word.
Open Office Calc replacing Microsoft Excel.
Open Office Impress replacing Microsoft PowerPoint.
GIMP replacing Adobe Photoshop.
GNU replacing Dreamweaver/Frontpage.

The above are all viable alternatives to the software I was using and now my computer is running like greased lightning.