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> >From time to time I have to write an article on a software package where I
> need to acquire the software myself. ...
One thing to look at, and point your contacts to, is the Internet Press
Guild's "Guide to Care and Feeding of the Press", written mainly for
corporate PR types:
Among other things, it points out that they should never send crippled
or 'demo' packages; reviewers need the full product, exactly what the
customer gets.
> I'm asking for replies with any ... opportunities ... for acquiring
> software packages at a discount, cheaply, free, ...
One option would be to review software that is free anyway. There are
huge amounts of it, and much of it is superior to the commercial
offerings in various ways. This might be a service to your readers, and
also perhaps also a bit of a niche market for you if other writers for
the publications you want are all writing about the proprietary stuff.
Some possibilities:
Sun's free Star Office package. Multilingual, runs on Linux, Solaris,
98, NT, Win 2K, ... The US air force recently started using it as
their standard office suite. www.sun.com
Utilities such as
CVS (http://www.cvshome.org/) for version and change management,
PERL (http://www.perl.com/) for report generation, text processing, ...
Apache (www.apache.org), the free web server with more market share
than Microsoft and Netscape combined
Security products such as:
OpenBSD (www.openbsd.org), the only operating system project I know
of whose core developers make security a top priority
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