The Silver Tongue Show

I used to be the sort of person who thinks: why would I pay for a software if I can get the same, or rather the same result, for free?
While I still look around for free software, and definitely love it, I think I’ve come to acknowledge the value of paid software.

TextMate was a typical example. After all, this is just a text editor, and if you’re only thinking about the result, then you can get about the same thing with a free editor like TextEdit or Smultron. But it’s not necessarily the result that counts, it’s the way to get there. In the case of TextMate, it’s obvious that the user experience while getting to a result is worth the money. And even if there are free tools around, if you want the best user experience then you need to spend some money on TextMate.

I think MarsEdit is another example of this paradigm.

I have a Wordpress blog, and all of it is web-based, meaning you write your post from your web browser, and it is entirely free.
I’ve known MarsEdit for a long time, from friends and reviews on the Internet and never thought of giving it a try since all of the blogs I’ve maintained to date could be managed for free.
But MarsEdit was recently updated to version 2, and this time I thought I’d give the free trial a chance.
And I have to say this is a very nice piece of software. It’s sleek, very simple, it integrates seamlessly with Wordpress and within 5 seconds after I started the application I was ready to write a post.
Although Wordpress’ web interface does the job, I’ve always found it a bit slow and rather ugly.
MarsEdit is a huge improvement over this, and rather than having to deal with Wordpress for free, I think I prefer paying for the better user experience. I might end up paying for a license at the end of the demo period…