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no, you are not allowed to peek at those links either... ;)

"Proprietary software with many features makes work easier."

Not always true. There are many instances where the shear number of features make learning how to properly utilise a package detrimental to actually getting work done. For instance OrCAD is a proprietary PCB design package, with many features, it is also very complex and hard to learn how to use - I know, I've had to learn the basics in the past. Where as Easy-PC, which lacks many of the advanced features that OrCAD has, is much easier to learn and use, is more than adequate for many users.

If they're photographers they're going to prefer Photoshop to the GIMP. If they're authors they're going to prefer Microsoft Word to Open Office Write. If you play video games you are going to want Microsoft Windows and not GNU/Linux.
This again is simply not true. I know many photographers that are happy to pay for photoshop, I also know many photographers that are not and are quite happy to use the GIMP. Many authors do not use Microsoft Word, at least up till 2000 it had an annoying feature of becomming very unstable as documents got large, especially if they contained a large number of images. There are people that use word for large documents, but there are also a large number of authors that use simple editors and write there documents using TeX. I admit that if you want to play all the latest games then Windows is still pretty much a prerequisite, though this is changing. A growing proportion of the largest games titles are being written and ported to windows, Mac and Linux. For example: Unreal Tournament, Doom 3 & Neverwinter Nights

One of the most amazing things about the Free Software movement is that somehow a core of very intelligent people have somehow convinced themselves that acutally LOWERING their productivity by using incredibly arcane and user unfriendly applications is in some way a GOOD thing
I once again disagree. I have been more productive since I started using opensource software. I have been able to concentrate on the job at hand, without worrying about the latest viruses and worms. I don't have to worry about attachments so much. All my applications are updated from one simple to use GUI updater. I can quickly search and install hundreds of useful applications from a similarly simple to use GUI and uninstall then just as easily if I find they do not do what I want them to do.

To paraphrase Han Solo: "The people aren't in this for your revolution, princess."
With this I will have to agree. The majority of people do not use opensource to be part of some revolution. They use opensource because it offers them things that other software does not. The web is driven by open software. Google use Linux, Yahoo uses one of the BSDs, most DNS servers run BIND, a large percentage of mail servers run sendmail, again a large percentage of webservers use apache. A large number of acedemic projects utilise and/or produce opensourced software. A growing number of large corporations and municipal authorites are turning to opensource software for their IT needs. Very few of these people are doing this just because it is opensource. They are doing it because it makes good political or business sense to them.

There are good electronic design automation tools today that will tell you if your design will work. They have simulators; try before you build. That full toolset is about $10,000. If you're designing anything serious, it's worth it.

There are free tools, like Berkeley Spice, but it's a decade out of date. Free software hasn't kept up in this area.

I'm not sure why "debugging a digital circuit on a breadboard is hard" is a statement insightful enough to require +4, but doesn't anyone use stuff like OrCAD these days? I know it's not Free or available on Linux, but ya know, even RMS goes for the commercial stuff when there's no quality alternative...

Stuff like Alias/Wavefront is very expensive. A EDA software company donated 4 licenses to our school... it was worth 1.2 million.

When I was in engineering school, we used Orcad to do our electronics layouts. At $4500 a copy, us students were too poor to take advantage of learning design techniques at home. It was a real shame, because with a good set of macros, I could bang out a circuit fast as I could dream about building it. Now that I'm out of school and no longer have access to the software, all those fun analog and microprocessor circuits that I designed are useless. That is one of the reasons I no longer trust proprietary software.

Your Dad (probably) owns a rip-off company. Very few CAD/CAM applications are reasonably priced, and I wouldn't be suprised if $20 was less than 0.1% of the original price.

At my college, we are all expected to use a piece of CAD/CAM electronics software called ORCAD. For 140 students there is only one lab with it installed on 20 computers. This lab is used for classes, and therefore is only avaliable from 4pm to 7 am for student use. I asked at a local software store if I could purchase a student version. They told me it cost $13,000 and the company refused to make a student licensed version. Can you understand how people like your dad make money from College students? This is where the phrase "Raping one's wallet" comes from. I paid only $1,300 for college. Why do I have to buy software costing 10x the price of the College, and 100x the price of my most expensive book, and 1000x the price of the most expensive piece of equipment I had to buy? Is it that good? For $13,000 I'd expect a coder to come around and fix personally, in my house, any problems I had with it... But they won't!

Do you think I bought that software? Would you buy it for yourself? At this price, it would be cheaper to pay a "fraud" fine than buy the software!

See for yourself, @ www.orcad.com. I'll be surprised if you can find a price on their site...

Of course, if this software cost $30, then your company and the College students should talk... ;-) That's what I was expecting to pay. Actually, technically speaking, since I'll be an Electronics Engineer, and probably will use at work what I used at College, perhaps it should be free... You're guaranteed (if your software is good) to get your money back in a year or two...

That's my $13,000 on the issue. Pay up, now, tyvm. ;-)