I was testing out Adobe Express and am very impressed with the free version. It is a powerful, well designed app that works great on an Android phone, but the PWA version is perfect on my Chromebook. More on Express in another post, but this got me thinking about my software subscriptions.
For a long time I have been accustomed to using open source software. It is free and I generally like the idea of open source in general. Lately however I am willing to pay for software. Since I started writing I have had to evaluate just how much time I can spend learning to use open source software. It turns out I would rather write.
It has also occurred to me that what you pay for in software subscriptions is expertise. Grammarly is a better editor than I am. Adobe Express can edit graphic files better than I can. MS Office compatibility is essential to writers.
When you subscribe to commercial software you are exchanging money for ease of use and a better quality of output. Also you get all the AI yumminess that is all the rage. And that mean I can produce writing or graphics that are better than I can produce with good old fashioned open source software. This is one more thing that I have changed my mind about since I started my deep dive into cloud computing / ChromeOS.