Software comes free for several reasons.
Some give away a recent version hoping you'll buy the new one, while a fourth category gives software away to banjax the competition. Let's save a couple of hundred quid straight away with two basic requirements for old or new PC owners. Secondly, everyone wants an office suite to handle word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, calendars, and databases. So, almost everyone buys or pirates Microsoft Office, which costs a bob or two. Be sure to download in segments from Amsterdam rather than complete from the States, unzip all the files before hitting setup.exe, and beware of Star-Office's imperialist tendencies, especially regarding your web browser and mail client.