# What software programs have you paid for that you felt are worth it over freeware options **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 25, 2025, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-software-programs-have-you-paid-for-that-you-felt-are-worth-it-over-freeware-options/1017463 "2025-04-25T04:04:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 16
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2025, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-software-programs-have-you-paid-for-that-you-felt-are-worth-it-over-freeware-options/1017463/16 "2025-04-25T14:57:14Z")
> [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](#): > > I’m very ignorant of ChatGPT. What specific practical uses does it have for you? It’s mostly replaced search engines for me, at least for the initial part of research. I still ask for and double check citations for anything important. I frequently use it for work (computer programming), making example images of a rough concept, translating to different human languages, having it perform a deep analysis where it searches and summarizes multiple sources, formatting Markdown and other text, etc. I also use it for fun, generating trivia questions or using it like a smarter Wikipedia to learn about new concepts, summarize PDFs (though NotebookLM is better for that), talk about cats, and other inane stuff like that. More examples from other threads here: > [@Tell me about Kagi search](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tell-me-about-kagi-search/1016571/8): > > There’s a lot of other topics about this already (see [1](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-regular-things-can-ai-currently-be-used-for/1015523/38), [2](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-they-pushing-ai-artificial-intelligence-so-hard/1013480/28), [3](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fess-up-have-you-used-ai-deliberately/1004124), [4](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/irl-how-do-you-use-ai/1012811/73), [5](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-next-page-in-the-book-of-ai-evolution-is-here-powered-by-gpt-3-5-and-i-am-very-nay-extremely-impressed/975945/6), and [more in the “AI” tag](https://boards.straightdope.com/tag/ai)), so I don’t want to hijack this one. Happy to discuss more in any of the other topics, though! --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-software-programs-have-you-paid-for-that-you-felt-are-worth-it-over-freeware-options/1017463)._