Free Software Versus purchased / paid for: Pros and cons?

One thing that has really amazed me in recent years is the blurring of quality between Free software, and those packages you pay for. In this blog, we are going to look at offerings on Office,  Desktop Publishing (DTP), Graphical design, CAD, and any other Genres that you the viewer of this site can suggest!. The idea here is to encourage our viewers to compile a general consensus on whether paid-for software is much better than free software, or in fact if the opposite may be true!. Lets forge ahead and find out!.