In today’s wireless world, purchasing software for your computer can be done at home with the click of a button. Until a few years ago, if you wanted a particular piece of software you had to sometimes visit several stores to find the product you wanted. Then once you finally found it, you purchased a big box with your disk or disks, and wound up having to store or dispose of a bunch of trash. This certainly made a big contribution to landfills each year. It was also necessary to carefully store your disks, because your purchase would be for nothing if you lost or damaged them.
The concept of downloading software is one that has been around for some time. Many products were quietly available for download online, but it was not practical for most people to download software until recently. Until a few years ago, dial-up internet was standard. While this worked fine for standard internet use, it would take too long for customers to download a large software product. With DSL and cable internet more common, now it is easy for even large products to be downloaded directly to the customer’s computer.
Today you can be confident in your downloaded material and especially if you use open source freeware such as Putty which helps to establish secure connections and Tight VNC if you choose to work on your desk top remotely. With so many products to choose from, you need never purchase a conventional “box with disks” again.
There are many benefits to both the consumer and the software companies. One mutual benefit is convenience. If a customer decides they need a product at 3 am, they are able to download it instead of having to wait until the next day for the store to open. Not generating packaging trash is also a major benefit for our planet. Not having to produce this packaging saves the software companies money, which they sometimes pass on to the consumer. A final benefit is that usually when customers purchase software online, the information is stored on the server of the software company, so the product can be downloaded again in the future if the customer gets a new computer or has to reformat.