Which language you want?

This one certainly qualifies for the small-inexpensive-thing tag.

Baraha (meaning "writing") is a software that's been popular with Kannada users for a long time. In spite of its quirks and indifferent prowess at spellcheck, it is apparently widely used. Baraha, now in version 7 or so is a huge fat software - though it is completely free.

Recently a friend pointed me to a Baraha lite version called Baraha IME. You can use it to write in any unicode supported web app - from email, blogs, html forms, and forums such as Orkut. Super stuff! just a 1.5 MB download, and a 5 second install. And you have a nice, single touch mechanism to switch between languages.
ఇలా తెలుగులో రాయొచ్చు.

ಬೇಕಾದರೆ, ಕನ್ನಡದಲ್ಲಿ ಕೂಡ ಬರಿಯಬಹುದು.

हिंदी मे भी लिख सकते है.
It works with 7 other languages - Marathi, Oriya, Bengali, Gujarati, Punjabi, Tamil and Sanskrit (too bad I can't demo all of them here!!)

It works on a transliteration basis, so you have your language keboard skills already on hand - just a few simple rules to follow for the long vowels and hard consonants!

The ease of it has turned a die-hard English writer like me into an occassional experimenter with my known Indian languages!!