Free Software - why would you pay?

I've always been a fan of free software. Since the inception of the internet, downloading shareware, and better yet, freeware has been hugely popular. However, replacing Microsoft Office with one of it's free rivals did not seem practical... until now. The latest release candidate of OpenOffice rocks! I quickly tested out all of the programs, and except for the database (Base), the other programs are just as good or better than their Microsoft counterparts. Impress (Powerpoint), Writer (Word), and Calc (Excel) meet all of my needs so far. I have have imported MS files into them with no problems at all (and done the opposite). By the way, Writer can save documents as Adobe PDF files, something Word doesn't do. So here are your options: buy Microsoft Office 2003 for $500 or download OpenOffice for FREE. Hmm. http://www.openoffice.org.

On the subject of free software. How about a free Adobe Photoshop ($600)? The GIMP is a high learning curve program that can almost replace Photoshop. In fact, there is a hacker who has hacked the GIMP interface to very closely resemble Adobe Photoshop. It's called GIMPshop. The windows version is not quite ready yet, but get ready, because it's gonna rock, and oh yeah, it's FREE. http://www.plasticbugs.com/