Software - free or paid

[Carbonite Australia]

I would like to know what small businesses are doing regarding their PC software needs, particularly as revenues start to get tighter.

Are they looking for free alternatives or are they continuing to pay for licensed subscriptions?

Arthur Koulianos
BDM - AVG & Carbonite

[Creating Change]

http://www.smartcompany.com.au/Blog/Brendan-Lewis-Blog/20081021-Solutions-and-theyre-free.html

I am unsure if I could speak for a majority of people, however the link above holds an article which probably does speak for many entrepreneurs as Brendan Lewis is in that category and interacts with many people.

[KarenC]

I value the Adobe design software I use - and yes I pay for it despite it being expensive. I also pay to update it with every new release and budget for it in the 18 month new release cycle. I don't like paying monthly license fees for software as I prefer to know that I own what I have paid for, including software. This bodes well in downtimes.

[ray_223]

Hi Arthur,

I've always been a huge open source fan (I'm a software developer by trade and enjoy the freedom of open source).

But from a business point of view though the decision is much easier to make ... what is the best ROI. Free software is great but if it takes twice as long to get the same results you are much better off using commercial software.

Every year open source software is getting better ... let me know if there is anything in particular you are looking for.

Regards,

Ray Smith
RaymondSmith.com

[MissieK]

It depends on what the software is... most of what I have I bought, or am covered by a liscence from my parents company.

Melissa

[Angela, communic8 design]

I'm a huge fan of Google Docs, especially as I have a team in-house and out and lots of projects running at any one time that need to be tracked efficiently.

We use spreadsheets hosted online for lots of our projects, this means any one of us can log in to access and update information as needed. It works really well, simple and reliable.

I also encourage any clients who have larger documents to publish such as newsletters or magazines with multiple article contributors to use a word processing Google Doc. Saves all the 'which version is the latest', 'where is the previous draft'... hassles.

And, best of all, like so many things Google does, it's free!

[Burgo]

Open Office is free

I recently bought a second computer an it came with microsoft office or so I thought untill I read the fine print it was a trial package.

A friend sent me an email with an attachment and said if you cant open the attachment download open Office, so I did virtually the same as microsoft which wanted $ 499.00 for the programme yet I had only paid $ 480.00 for the computer.

Goodadvice above posts, ta

[petercrocker]

Lots of good advice and resources here.

We've also published a couple of relevant articles on the topic of free software on Flying Solo with lots of examples and recommendations if you're looking for more information:

http://www.flyingsolo.com.au/p275766...-business.html

http://www.flyingsolo.com.au/p236155...-soloists.html

Cheers,
Peter

[@HeatherSmithAU]

Peter has provided a link to an article I wrote on this subject - I am a big fan of free software. If you like the features, and need more you can take it to the next level and pay / upgrade.

Many of these sites have 'donation' options if you feel guilty.

GOOGLE has such a huge array of free software - before you buy anything you really need to see if they have it out there in beta or live version.

[Adam Randall]

My thoughts are you generally get what you pay for, although Google has definitely purchased a few good companies and is offering some really good quality programs at no cost, this will only increase with time.

Here is a link to an article I did a while back on choosing the right business accounting software

Ultimately there are pros and cons to each. For someone who has not had much experience with computers then the free software like Open Office would be the same learning curve as MS Office.