Why pay for software?

If your business relies on professional software you may be willing to pay for it. But in many cases "open source" software can be as good or even better, and at zero cost! At the end of this page there is a link to a page containing recommendations. For now lets look at some examples.

Purpose	Proprietary example	Open Source example
Operating system	Windows 7 Home Premium £110	UBUNTU
Office suite	Microsoft Office Pro £430	Open Office
Desktop publishing	Microsoft Publisher £120	Scribus
Image manipulation	Photoshop Elements £80	The Gimp
Diagrams	Visio Standard £220	Dia
Personal Information Management	Outlook (inc in Office Pro)	Aethera
Project management	Microsoft Project £500	OpenProj
Finance management	Sage Instant Accounts £140	TurboCash
Database	Microsoft Access (inc in Office Pro)	MySQL

 

If you really need to use proprietary software for compatibility with clients or collaborators thats OK. But where you have a choice you can save cash by choosing open-source "freeware".

Here is a page of some of my recommendations.