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Free! Free?

I think people are beginning to lose language skills. I mean, I’m not saying I’m perfect but others in this world are using language wrong. Let me elucidate:

I went looking for some software that performed a particular function for a project I was working on at the office. I browsed to my favorite search engine and typed something that had both ‘free’ and ‘software’. It comes up with several thousand responses. Fine.

I open several of the links to find that this software is, in fact, NOT free. On many of them were the phrases ‘the software is absolutely free’ and ‘it only costs xx dollars’. What? Then I notice their ‘catch’. The way some of them put it is ‘click here for the free download’. How does that work? I have to pay for the software but to download it is free? That makes no sense.

Free: provided without charge and not subject to payment.

Of course there are others that work it differently. Some will ask you to take a ‘brief’ survey (which takes an hour), or you have to fill out this form with your information and they e-mail you the link. No thanks.

I ended up finding some really good software (according to the features) and clicked on the link for ‘trial software’. I’m okay with that. Let me try it out for a couple days and have it expire. So I have to give them my e-mail address – it’s for business so I put in my work e-mail address. It’s all going to plan. Then the page comes up that says their going to e-mail me a link. Dammit. The boss really wants software like this so I jump through the hoops. I wait an hour – AN HOUR – and they send the e-mail. I open it up thinking it’s going to be a link to the software and I can finally see it. Wrong again. The e-mail is to confirm that I really want to download the software in question. Well, duh!

So I respond to the e-mail – stupidly. My office phone number is in the signature of my e-mail. You guessed it… they call me. “We’d like to set up a web-conference so that we can show you how the software works”. They must really think their software is the greatest thing since sliced bread. If I find out that the software is a piece of crap I’m going to give someone there an earful because this is ridiculous.

So I tell the guy who calls “Look, I just wanted to play with the software to see if it would do what we want it to do”. “I understand that, sir” he begins. I hate it when they call me ‘sir’. So on Wednesday I have web-conference with these folks to take a look at this piece of software. Like I said, it better blow me away or I’m tearing someone a new one.

Basically what they’re saying by doing this (in my eyes) is they’re assuming I’m a freakin’ idiot. I’ll admit I’m not the smartest man on the planet but I think I can work my way through some software that’s intuitively written. I guess maybe that’s why they’re doing it – because maybe it’s so clunky that they feel the NEED to walk everyone through it. Ugh! It just galls me (as you can tell).

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