I'm sorry to disagree with you on this, but I'd rather pay, within reasonable terms, for something that actually works and saves me trouble, than having to deal with an OS on my computer that is only making my interaction and work with it way harder. That is exactly why I left Windows and decided to move to the Mac/Apple environment.
It is not that much about how much you Pay in actual money but about the amount of time you end up wasting for having an Operating System full of flaws.
Learned my Lesson with Windows Vista and OSX Lion.