"pay for" software?

[Davegod]

OK so I'm very bored, but I just noticed I have like 4 peices of paid-for software on my PC. Before someone finishes copy & pasting from their "warez ppl suck" section of stock AT replies, I mean 4 peices of software that is supposed to be paid for.

And I'm not counting games. Games make it up to about 20, and double that if you count uninstalled games.

I have -
Norton AV, Norton Ghost, Nero Express (for pocketchange price), and PowerDVD (though I got it bundled free).
I count All Seeing Eye as games software, and also count my payment for it as a 'donation' anyway. All my non-gaming software, bar the OS, cost me about the price of two games (which is also less than the price of the OS).

Practically everything else on my PC is likely in the two "freebies" stickes in this forum, and a couple of the above could easily be replaced with free stuff also. There is practically no other software I want that should be paid for - right now I'm just looking for a lightweight .doc word processor that doesnt come with the entire Open Office suite.

Do you even need to buy software, bar the OS, to run a highly functional 100% legit Windows PC?

 

[powerMarkymark]

No

 

[LtPage1]

nope.

 

[igowerf]

I have Photoshop CS, Premiere Elements, and Office 2003. Everything else is pretty much freeware.

 

[0roo0roo]

not much... the stickes thread is rpetty good.

 

[alm4rr]

Originally posted by: Davegod
w I'm just looking for a lightweight .doc word processor that doesnt come with the entire Open Office suite.[/b]

abiword

 

[dunkster]

This question can be approached from a number of perspectives. One perspective often ignored is how will freeware downloads affect the security of the pc it's downloaded to?

As an example, I recently downloaded a 'free license' program to rip CD music tracks to MP3 files. When I opened the installer exe, my firewall/AV combo (MicroTrend IS2005) lit up like a pinball machine - identifying, quarantining and deleting 12 adware instances and one trojan instance.

There are excellent freeware programs available, but many 'freeware' programs are 'paid for' by the adware and spyware they install on your PC.

 

[Rhin0]

I paid $12 for XP Pro and $12 for XP Office.... I think that was worth it

 

[high]

microsoft gave me my copy of office 2003 pro

 

[n7]

I have realized you really do not need to pay for much software save for games & OS.

There are so many awesome free programs out there; you just gotta find them

 

[Mermaidman]

Hm, not counting games, I paid for:
Windows XP
MS Office
PhotoImpact 6
iTunes

I really should pay for irFanView, but I haven't.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I don't have Office installed, although somewhere I have a legit Office97 SBE CD set, I finally sold off my VC6 CDs since it was so archaic and downloaded MingW and MS VC7.1 "Starter Edition" or whatever their new freely-downloadable versions are called. Also have PowerSoft Optima C++ 1.5 free, and Borland Command-line C++ 5.5 free. Other than my OS and dev tools, and whatever legitimately "paid-for" software that came bundled with hardware as OEM editions (games, CD-burning, DVD-player, etc.), everything else is shareware/freeware: Mozilla, Firefox, WinRAR, WinAMP, Media Player Classic, DVDShrink, DVDDecryptor, CDDoctor, CDSpeed, Ad-Aware, Kerio 2.x, PFE (Programmers File Editor), Prime95, Grand Theft Auto, Trillian, mIRC...

I suppose that you could even get away from paying for the OS, with Linux and WINE, if/when it gets good enough at emulating/supporting the Win32 API set. Yep, software is a commodity, like it or not. Also a sort of working form of art, as evidenced by the large number and also high quality of many of the leading freeware apps, like EAC, PFE, MPC, etc.

 

[Davegod]

dunkster yeah I know what you mean, you do have to be a little cautious with free software. I try to stick to widely reccomended stuff - or at least look for it on cnet downloads and check the review/comment - and always download from trusted site or at least the authors page. sourceforge tends to be reliable, none of those problems with CDex for ripping CDs

alm4rr, thanks, reading up on that now

VirtualLarry, GTA is free and still fun but check out Enemy Territory if you like team based FPS multiplayer. Download the game, patch to 1.02, Grab ETPro for it (basically a mod that continues development of ET) and maybe take a look at the 'big' total conversion mods which are mostly (i.e. the first two) expected before xmas - True Combat: Elite, ET:Fortress and Urban Terror. Man, even the game that I've played by far the most for the last year was free!

 

[Cawchy87]

not a cent

 

[n0cmonkey]

I pay for Nero, but I don't _need_ to.

 

[Nocturnal]

I paid for Office 2003, XP Pro, CuteFTP, VS.net (through school), and that's about it that's the only software I use.

 

[Armitage]

Originally posted by: dunkster
This question can be approached from a number of perspectives. One perspective often ignored is how will freeware downloads affect the security of the pc it's downloaded to?

As an example, I recently downloaded a 'free license' program to rip CD music tracks to MP3 files. When I opened the installer exe, my firewall/AV combo (MicroTrend IS2005) lit up like a pinball machine - identifying, quarantining and deleting 12 adware instances and one trojan instance.

There are excellent freeware programs available, but many 'freeware' programs are 'paid for' by the adware and spyware they install on your PC.

The difference in culture between windows & FOSS communities is amazing. I've never run across crap like that in all the huge number of linux packages I've downloaded & installed (above & beyond the stuff included in the distribution).

 

[tart666]

there's no decent free replacements for
nero
illustrator / freehand
photoshop (gimp is close, but not it)

that said, it really frustrates me that i'd have to pay $300 to get a student license for Photoshop, even though I only need it 2 hrs per month... Grrr

 

[BFG10K]

Apart from games I have MS Office and Visual C++ but that's pretty much it. The likes of Nero I get free because it's bundled with my drives.

 

[skyking]

When I got out of school and no longer had to work on projects collaberatively, the need went way down. I have used powerpoint once since college, and really don't use word much. My ISP's server antivirus has been absolutley flawless, also.