Everyone loves excellent freebie alternatives to expensive software. The all to often truth is that you get what you pay for (hopefully) and “There ain’t no such thing as free lunch.”

So, folks collect gems, share them, write articles about them, try and find sites loaded with them….

Here’s an alternative to that:

The alternative is AlternativeTo.net . Bookmark it now. You can always come back to this article.

The approach to use is easy: click on Windows, type in the name of the software you’re seeking (such as Office or Word, etc.) and an alternative list of software will appear and you can sort this by rank, likes or alphabetically. There are plusses and minuses to each filter. A great alternative may have appeared very recently and not have accumulated “likes” or begin with a “Z”… well, you get the idea.

You should give it a spin… The way I use it is I get a list of alternatives and then take a look at reviews from PCMagazine, CNET.com and other software sites.

An example of a ‘minus’ in the search is an alternative for “Windowblinds”: Cairoshell is listed in first place… it hasn’t been an alternative, and probably won’t be.

Take a look, you might just find something good…