It is too often that all of us as consumers take for granted the effort and cost that goes into any given product we may purchase or use. In regard to software, it is something we may feel that we need but shouldn’t pay much for, in fact many times the question is asked, why pay for it at all?

In today’s economy, there is little money to go around and something free is appealing, but if it could mean loss and further cost to cover the loss, it is surely something to think more about rather than making a quick decision.

Ultimately, a good percentage of the same people that ask why pay for it, end up doing exactly that, they pay for it in loss of their time, loss of their files, the computer stops working, the computer becomes very slow, they get a virus or some other malware, etc…

On the other hand, there is a good percentage of freeware out there that has the makings of great software and could potentially be great one day once they get enough resources and money to take the next steps needed to grow. Many great companies started in their garage or school dorm room with one person and grew their software to be some of the most recognizable names in the software industry.

The truly greatest companies may not be the largest or the most recognized, they just do the absolute best they can to fill the needs of the customer and sell their product for the best deal possible so that it is affordable to everyone.

Some companies prefer to remain lean and efficient in order to stay close to the product and customers. This can allow them to put their money right back into the product and make it that much better for the customer. Other companies grow to an unmanageable state where the majority of the people in the company care, but it becomes impossible to reel it all in with escalating amounts of people, processes, policies, opinions, etc… being constantly added.

In the end, those companies commonly get bought and the product evolves to something it was never meant to be or sometimes, the companies just go out of business because they can’t communicate and deliver a product due to overgrowth, distraction and exceeding costs they weren’t prepared for.

The thought that goes into a piece of software is generally where it all starts and then the dream is born. After that, the real work comes while trying to make it a reality.

Once you decide what you want to do and how it will work for your customer and their needs, you have to get into all of the background details of how those seemingly simple features and functionality will actually work. For instance, many companies will develop software based on one or more of the programmers or owners personal experiences that are common to that of many people they know or have heard life experiences from.

Taking the next step to research it is the best thing to do. If doing a survey is possible, those can be very useful for mixed feedback that you may not hear from friends or those close to you.

Taking all of this into consideration is what really makes the software more universally accepted. Many freeware applications are not very feature rich because they are intended to only do a few things or they can only have more features as the money comes in to cover the development costs whether it is more development tools they need or programmers, it all costs money.

Some freeware may have a lot of features, but several of them are being grown over time and in their daily build state, may be more prone to bugs that get worked out later as they can be addressed.

Larger companies get stuck in the game of who has the most features based on bullet points. It is not only how many features you have, it is how well you accomplish the goals with what you have and that could be only an effective yet small handful of simple yet powerful features in a small application that doesn’t cost much and is supported well.

Some companies put together multiple applications into large suites that are so broad, the customer has no idea where to begin or where to find the one or two things that they need to do at the moment. What happens very often, is that the immense amount of effort put into a suite like this is wasted because the end user uses a couple of features that they were able to find easily and they never use the rest of the suite.

As well, many of these large suites have so many little applications that they really never add the right features to the small applications. This means that even though the huge suite has a lot of stuff, it may not even be the stuff that is needed if and when you actually find it.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 25th, 2010 at 6:37 pmand is filed under Products. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.