Ah, that's not true. (but it might have been then)

I have 38 programs and drivers on my computer that I installed myself, and they are all free and working perfectly.
(that includes my japanese language pack and updated video driver)

Freeware has come along way, and is very good.
You just need to know where to go to get the good stuff.

My "AVAST antivirus" came recommended from my cousin.
(and both him and his twin bro are computer geeks - even more then me)

Some of mine are...
FLV Player---------------------------VLC Player
Camstudio---------------------------DOSbox
Wavelab lite-------------------------CDisplay
GIFanimator-------------------------AusLogics Disk Defrag
DVD region decrypter--------------UN-LOCKER
SWF Player--------------------------CoffeeCup HTML Editor
BitTorrent----------------------------Jolt3D Game Engines
ASCII converter---------------------LHA compression
Firefox--------------------------------WinRAR
ADaware------------------------------SPYbot
Flash Player---------------------------Shockwave Player
Adobe Reader-------------------------Bikanel (Al Bhed translator - FFX language)
M.U.G.E.N. (a 2D fighting game that lets you put in almost any anime character that you want)
Cyberbabe Screensaver (video game characters - don't look for this one - just ask if you want to know why)
Alcohol 120% (not free - but if you set you PCs clock back - the demo will think that it hasn't expired yet)

Some of their website appear to be pay only.
I got freebies on most of them so I never knew.

[I'll be back with a more detailed list later if anyone is interested]