On a trip to Windsor House, I noticed a rack full of CD-Roms at $40 a pop. My cynicism kicked in. I thought: 'Score another big victory for the pirates.' On closer inspection, I discovered that it was all legitimate. The price had fooled me.
What I was looking at was shareware on CD-Rom.
Shareware has been part of the PC revolution almost from its beginnings. For those too young to remember, much of the impetus behind the revolution came on the heels of 1960s and 70s youth culture.
Indeed, the beginning was almost all shareware or write-your-own software. If you wanted something, you had to do it yourself.
The normal way to obtain shareware is on the Internet, but it can take a long time to download. The answer is to get a CD-Rom.
Explore the World of Software which has scores of titles on just about anything. I picked up two on languages and dictionaries, but there are titles devoted to utilities, a pinball collection, a mahjongg (sic) collection, a chess collection, Win 95 wallpaper collection, the Bible, literature, browsers, Internet plug-ins and more.
Many are primitive. They are not professionally done, they may crash your PC and often are impossible to load.