Ask Yourself These Questions Before You Buy Software

by Bonnie Boots

I love software. My hard drive is full of it. My shelves are filled with books on how to use it. So I'm hardly the best person to tell you this, but…STOP buying software!

Stop, that is, and think before you buy. Think, "Am I willing to invest the hours, maybe months it will take to learn this program?"

Think, "Do I already have something on my hard drive that will do the job?"

Think, "Is there freeware available that will do what I need?"

I know you receive emails every day, urging you to buy this software and that. Sometimes the price is modest, but even modest purchases add up to a lot of wasted money when you don't need or won't use the software.

Before I came to the internet, my clients were print magazines, newspapers and TV stations. In order to work with them, I needed the latest edition of sophisticated and expensive software.

When I started on the internet, I naturally used the software I already owned. But I found that in my new line of work, I used very few of the functions of any given program

Over time, I stopped buying the updates on many programs, because I no longer needed the latest version. Today, much of the software I use is three or four generations behind. And that doesn't matter at all, because it still does all I really need.

When I do need an occasional piece of software, I look first for freeware. Today, with major players like Google vying to attract users with free software, freeware is often as good as the equivalent high-priced product.

To find freeware, I go to Google and type in "freeware + create PDF," for example. (If you use that search, don't use the quote marks.) Sites like Tucows offer a vast variety of freeware reviewed and rated by users so you can quickly see what's a great deal and what's a dud.

When I can't find freeware that does what I want, I look for fee-ware, software you pay a fee to use, and I try to ferret out a program that will do what I want and little more. Why pay for features you'll never use?

For instance, almost anyone working on the internet needs to create PDF files. PDF is the preferred format for delivering information products because any computer can open a PDF. And you are undoubtedly used to reading mostly-text ebooks in PDF format. But did you know PDF files can be multimedia, carrying text, audio and video?

That's a function few people involved in internet marketing use, yet it accounts for a good deal of the high price of purchasing Adobe Acrobat.

I paid $700 for Adobe Acrobat a few years ago, when I needed it to work with magazines, but in my work n the internet, I seldom use those fancy functions.

There's no sense in buying a sophisticated, high-priced product when you only need a few of its functions. The bushel basket of PDF-formatters available for free or a small fee will do most everything you'll actually need.

When I receive an email urging me to buy some software I'm assured I need, I do a search before I click that "buy it now!" button. I search Google for the name of the product to see if I can find it cheaper. I often can.

I search, too, for something with the same function. Preferably something free. I can often find that, as well.

And of course, I search through my hard drive to see if I've already own the product. More than once I've been intrigued by an email, only to find the touted software lying dormant on my hard drive, still unused.

Your time and money are too precious to waste on software you won't use r don't need. So next time you're tempted to buy something, stop and think…

*Am I willing to invest the hours, maybe months it will take to learn this program?"

* "Do I already have something on my hard drive that will do the job?

* "Is there freeware available that will do what I need?


 
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