I think the programs that would be useful for a particular person depend on what that person needs to do.

If you tell us what kind of stuff you use your computer for (maybe what Apps were well-liked on your old computer), someone will be able to tell you what does that well today.

Unfortunately, your "general purpose use" list is still too broad to really give relevant advice. For example, "text editing" could be done in Apple's Text Edit, but it's not very exciting. MS Word has everything that a pro might need (including the kitchen sink), but comes at a price. If you're just doing flyers and cards for printing, something like Print Explosion has a wide variety of templates and graphics, but is not very compatible for sharing with others.

I'd say it all depends on the price, compatibility, ease of use, and feature set that you're looking for.

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I'm just wondering what's cool now.

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Yummy FTP