Free software

Everybody likes free stuff, right?

Every now and then I do a search for free software. May be something pops up that can be useful for me.

Most times, however, the search results are somewhat misleading. They show up with the notion: ‘free download.’ If you don’t know any better you would think that’s a great deal.

Look further and you’ll notice that the actual download is free, but you have to pay to use the software.

That’s like physical stores saying that entering and looking around is free, silly isn’t it?

Another annoyance is that some software developers offer a free version. Great, but soon you will see that in this version so many options are disabled that it is basically unusable. Or every two minutes popup tells you that you should upgrade to the full version.

Have you ever tried software that can find and restore files that you deleted by mistake? Some of them do find these files after scanning the drives for a while but then it tells you that in order to restore them, you need the paid version of the software. Frustrating and a waste of time. It should be clear before installing it that the free version does not actually restore the files.

It’s not all bad though, There are some wonderful programs that works great and are completely free with no strings attached. Just check closely before you install it and never, ever download from a questionable source. The last thing you want to do is to introduce viruses and malware to your system.