Over the past few years there is trend of free software’s.There are a lot of useless free software’s are available over the Internet and it’s very hard to which one to choose. Not every free software is good for you because sometimes attackers can use free software’s to inject some malicious code, virus or Trojan horse in your computer. It’s really hard to ignore free software’s but is price is the only deciding factor for choosing the free software? For the sake of business operations , security and image only price is not only the deciding factor for choosing the free software. Let’s have a look to some more important aspects before choosing any free software for your desktop, server or business purpose.

Support: Support is most important deciding factor is support. How much support you need for free software. Support is not a big problem for big organizations, because they can have a separate IT Department. Support is major issue with small organization. Some free software’s only works in online environment, they can’t be use in offline environment.

Are Software is used in Mission Critical Applications : If you are using software in day to day life for production purpose it’s better to go for the full version of that software.Some times you may not get full feature software as a free software. Like for you are using any image editor, so you may not get the full features in free version, for improving the productivity it’s better to go for full version.

Compatibility: If free software is working with it’s own file system, file format that can’t be used by other programs then it becomes very hard to use that file format every where. Software must provide at least one file format that can be used by different applications. But this problem you find in most paid software’s also.

Professionalism : Sometimes using a free email program like Hotmail can lead to a very bad impression. So better to go for some personal email program, that matches your organization domain name.

Is there any Limit on Usage: It’s very important to look closely at the capabilities of free software. Sometimes stripped down version of licensed software.Consider how often you’ll use the application and what kind of functionality you need before going with a free option.

Security: Security is also very important factor Before selecting any free software first think about the security issue. Is that free software is prone to security issues?

You may get lucky and find everything you need in a free application, but you may also find that when it comes to software, the best things aren’t free.

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