Don’t believe for a second that there are companies willing to rent office space, hire staff and pay oodles in development costs to develop software for you to use free of charge without something being in it for them.
While we are bumping down the road towards socialism, we ain’t there yet. Most folks still have to earn their way into a nice house and good food.
There is always one of three angles being played with free software (sometimes all at once)
- You only get a trial version. I am cool with this; in fact it is awesome that a software vendor is so confident that he would rely on his software to sell itself instead of some slick marketing ploy. Try-before-you-buy is a sweet deal but these deals either have limited time, ex: 30-days, or limited functionality, so you get enough of a taste to wet your whistle for the real thing or decide it is not for you. Either way you and the software vendor some away happy
- You will be marketed too constantly. This is very common; software vendors give you something free in exchange for your email (or worse yet, implant something into your browser to advertise based on your surfing. While this borders on malware, it ain’t because if you read the fine print you will see that you have authorized them to do this when you install their ‘free’ software. Sometimes this is referred to as AdWare
- You getting robbed. This can take many forms; the worst is that the vendors of free software are actually getting paid by malware vendors to deliver there software. This can be anything from browser redirects to key loggers. Identity theft is big business!
Is all free software bad?
Nope, in fact some of it is down right handy.
Two of my favorites are MalwareBytes and Paint.net.
The free version of MalwareBytes is limited in that it does not automatically update itself nor does it have a ‘real-time’ scan capabilities; but if you are in a pinch and need help removing malware this is good stuff (the best, if you ask me, which you kind of did by continuing to read!)
Paint.net is offered by Microsoft as an enhanced paint program. The reason they are giving this away is that it is a ‘proof-of-concept’ of .NET and what a wonderful development platform it is (according to Microsoft). Regardless, it is a cool application!
So, next time you get the itch to download the latest cool tool or gadget onto your PC; think twice and ask around.
Things To Think About…
- You could save yourself a bundle by avoiding FREE! (A good exception to this rule is the FREE STUFF we offer on our excellent website!!)
- All small business should run a periodic malware scanner on their devices. This malware scanner should be completely different from your anti-virus software. Two different solutions from two different vendors offer you the best chance to catch problems caused by free software before they get out of control.
