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Fee VS. Free Software

Do you get what you pay for? We pit the leading free applications against for-a-price alternatives.

Eric Dahl

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Though great free services are getting tougher to find on the Web, free software has never been better or more abundant. These days you can net everything from office suites to e-mail apps to firewalls without spending a dime. And while "free" used to mean "dumbed-down" or "crippled," some of today's no-cost apps, such as Outlook Express and ZoneAlarm, outshine most of their pay-to-use competitors.

But makers of many free applications are nudging users toward paid versions of the software. RealNetworks' RealOne media player, for instance, has features that work only if you subscribe to one of the company's audio or video services.

So what's the cost of living free? We compared some top free programs against their paid rivals, and tried paid versions of some of our favorite free apps. Read on to see when free software makes sense, and when you're better off paying up.

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