For too many people, the phrase "free software" conjures up images of pirated brand-name applications or poorly supported third-class programs. If that's what you think of freeware, you're missing an opportunity to save your business a lot of cash.

If you're a typical small-business owner, you don't have a centralized provisioning system that can easily and automatically deploy each desktop or laptop system. You might not even have a dedicated employee, let alone a whole department, to manage your IT resources. And you probably give each user their own local login, instead of using a centralized authentication server. In other words, your employees have the keys to their local computer kingdoms. And that means they can do just about anything on their machines: Install new applications, install undesirable applications, change settings, and perhaps even unintentionally corrupt the Registry or download malware.