"Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]" wrote...
>Ever tried a full (not upgrade) version of Adobe Acrobat? How
>about Auto-Cad? And for the Mac enthusiast, a copy of Final Cut
>Pro?
>
>Office is a steal at its current pricing - just look at Corel.

Or OpenOffice.

As for Acrobat, GhostScript produces reasonable hardcopy output even
under Windows. Print to a file using a PostScript printer driver, then
load the resulting PostScript file into GhostScript and convert it to
all sorts of different file formats, including PDF. On Linux systems
it's relatively easy (with some programming knowledge) to automate
this.

For AutoCAD, nice example. High-end CAD originated on Unix
workstations, and all the sophisticated packages have Unix, Linux and
Windows versions. But getting back to the point, there are free CAD
packages. Maybe not up to AutoCAD's level, but offering a real price-
performance choice.

And Final Cut Pro - not too useful for Windows. But are there open
source video editing packages? Why, yes, there are. Whoda thunk?!

Is all the free stuff as polished as the commercial stuff? For the
most part, no. The OS itself may be the exception. However, is the
free stuff good enough for most home users who shouldn't be using H&S
to do office work at home? For the most part, yes.

Office is a steal at the subsidized prices MVPs pay. How much
credibility should us mere humans give to someone who pays less than
H&S for Pro Ultimate telling the rest of us how cheap the full retail
price is?