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The Pros And Cons Of Free Software In general, there are easily more Pros than Cons. From the consumer standpoint not having to part with hard earned dollars is seldom a reason for complaint. Additionally, "free" software is a great way for software makers to bring their products to the attention of users who may very well purchase from them later. From the software maker's standpoint giving away "free" software is simply another form of marketing or advertising.
Trialware Or Shareware The word "free" appears in quotes for two reasons. For one, the software is often not really free, but may be a trial or limited version. In other words it may be free to try, but then after a certain number of days or uses the software no longer works unless you purchase it. That kind of software is often called Trialware or Shareware.
Crippleware Another variation is a special version of a regular full price product, but with limited functionality, also sometimes referred to as, "Crippleware." With Crippleware the manufacturer deliberately disables or removes certain features so that the product cannot be fully utilized until you purchase a license key. Often you are free to use such products indefinitely. It is the manufacturer's hope, of course, that at some point you will find the disabled features useful and compelling enough to go ahead and purchase the full price version in order to be able to use them.
Not Just For Small Or New Companies One myth about free software is that only new companies trying to get established or small companies with small advertising budgets make their software available fee. Not true! The concept of free software has been used by virtually every major computer software maker. When Netscape got the jump on Microsoft by being the first company to introduce the Web browser, Microsoft was still able to gain the market lead by eventually deciding to give away its Internet Explorer browser free. Adobe has used the concept of free software to make its PDF format the World's #1 document exchange format, by giving away a free version of its Adobe Reader software.
Avoid Software From Companies That Aren't "Reputable" Free or not it is a good idea to avoid downloading software from companies or download sites that are not reputable because software from questionable sources may contain computer viruses, Adware, or Spyware. Look for companies or individuals that have been around a while, appear credible, and, preferably, who make information about themselves, especially contact information, available on their Websites. That is not to say that there aren't good sources of software that don't follow these guidelines; but when you purchase or download software from someone who gives you nothing more to go by than a Website, at least exercise a little extra caution.
The Bad There is a bad side to free software that few are aware of, and which GRPMAX Magazine is one of the first to point out. In many cases free software is every bit as good as full price software, such as with Adobe's free Acrobat Reader, Netscape's Navigator Web browser, Microsoft's Internet Explorer, and many, many others. There are times, however, when free or cheap is not always a good thing. America Online (AOL), the largest online service, is today a pretty decent company, but it wasn't always that way. AOL got to be #1 via the relentless distribution and promotion of its ubiquitous "free" Internet service offers, usually in the form of a free diskette (in the early days), and later by way of free CDs. Not only did it work, but it worked a little too well in those early days. AOL grew so fast and had so many people trying to take them up on their free offer that they completely oversold beyond their ability to deliver. As when an airline overbooks a passenger plane, something has to give, and that's exactly what happened. People trying to dial in with their modems often just got a busy signal, it sometimes took many minutes or hours to get a connection, and service and performance were spotty. AOL was flooded by complaints from angry and dissatisfied customers and even ran afoul of the government for promising more than it could deliver, and false advertising. Again, today AOL is a pretty decent company. However, during many years of its existence it became and stayed #1 not because its service was truly the best, but simply because its "free" offers were overwhelmingly successful marketing efforts. Oracle, the second largest software company next to Microsoft, and the World's #1 supplier of database software, has also had similar periods in its history. In the late 1980s and early 1990s as Oracle tried to capture and dominate the growing PC market they started advertising software that delivered far less than their claims. In fact, they eventually even started advertising (and selling) software that really didn't exist at all, at least not in the form they claimed that it did. So Oracle too went through its period of being haunted by legions of dissatisfied customers, attracted the attention of the government, and, in fact, almost went under at one time because of it all. Microsoft has already received enough media coverage in this regard so that it probably does not bear repeating in any great detail that they also have been guilty of the same tactics. Many companies have. Notice that one important distinction in the examples above is that the product was not always free. This leads us to the next important point to watch out for in regard to "free" software: Sometimes a perfectly honest company produces a perfectly honest product that is exactly what it says it is, but simply isn't the best software. One such example is the VERY popular WS_FTP software by Ipswitch, Inc. In fact, their WS_FTP line of FTP client software is consistently ranked as #1. After using and researching all of the popular FTP client software over the many years of the entire life history of those kinds of products, I've never found WS_FTP to truly add up to be the #1 product. Why then has it so consistently been able to capture the #1 spot? Because Ipswitch's marketing effort of making available a free "Lite" version of WS_FTP has been and continues to be highly successful. After having exhaustively compared and used both products it has been easily apparent to me that for years the best FTP client is FTP Voyager, by Rhino Software, Inc. There truly is really no fair comparison between the two products, FTP Voyager is simply better. A review about FTP Voyager is just one of many forthcoming reviews that you can expect to see appearing soon on GRPMAX. Stay tuned...
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