Here's a rundown of Amazon's top-selling programs and their free counterparts. Granted, my criteria are pretty broad: the freebie has to offer only the basic functionality of the fee-based product and an interface that won't stymie the average user.Įxcluding Mac OS X Snow Leopard (number 8 on the list) and two Windows 7 Home Premium upgrades (standard and three-user family pack at 10 and 11, respectively), only two titles on Amazon's top 20 have no free equivalent that I'm aware of: Honest Technology's VHS to DVD Deluxe, which tops the Amazon list, and Nuance Communications' Dragon Naturally Speaking, which comes in at number 18. What about all those commercial security suites and system utilities? I ran down Amazon's list of the 20 best-selling software titles to find those for which no viable free alternative is available. (People who work from home and/or for themselves have to buy their own software, but they can at least write off the cost of the programs they use in their work.) The programs we use for work, such as Microsoft Office and specialty apps like Adobe Photoshop or Intuit's Quicken/ QuickBooks accounting software, are likely provided by our employer. Do-it-yourselfers have Linux as a free-OS alternative. That got me thinking: Is there any software that the average PC user needs to pay for? Most of us bought our current operating system-usually Windows or Mac OS X-as part of the purchase of the computer itself. I realized several months ago that I simply no longer needed to spend money for the convenience of an all-in-one security app. I'll replace it with Microsoft's free Security Essentials, which I've been using on my notebook since I bought it two years ago. Later this month I'll be canceling my subscription to a leading security suite that runs on two of my home-office PCs.
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