I was at one of the major online magazine sites today and spotted an advertisement for a software product that had been reduced from $39.95 down to an incredible $14.95. Several thoughts passed through my mind - the first being I wondered how many people fall for these ads, and the second being that no one was buying the product at $39.95, and even at $14.95, the price was still too high. Why too high? Because everything that this software promises to do can be obtained from free products available for download to everyone.

Some of the statements in the ad made me laugh:

Even experienced users find effective control of all the settings and resources of their PCs hard to achieve.

I do? I didn’t know that. Does anyone else find these settings and resources hard to control? This is a great sales pitch since it makes the newbie feel that if the pro’s can’t do it, neither can I. I don’t know exactly what these controls and resources are but this software will unlock the secret for us.

You can also selectively disable or remove unnecessary background and auto-start processes to cut valuable seconds off your startup time.

I believe that Mike Lin’s program does the same thing here for free.

Use powerful disk defrag and optimization features that are faster and more efficient than the standard built-in versions

Just like the free Auslogics Disk Defrag does located here.

Use File Clean Up to automatically free up even more disk space, quickly

Well one could use the free version of CCleaner located here.

My point is this. Before you go out and spend your hard earned money on any software product, check to see if their is a free alternative. Many of us experienced users only use free products because we know that they rival their commercial counterparts.

Here is a good place to start with to find more free software products.

Comments welcome.

[tags]software, pc, speed up, freeware[/tags]