Yes, for certain categories of software like Video editing, sound editing, photo editing software, web design software like Dreamweaver and Frontpage, computer games, antispyware, and office programs like MS Word, PowerPoint.
I also heard a lot of people prefer Invision and vBulletin software over the free phpBB forum software.
But, for internet browsers, video and music playing software, and anti-virus free is usually good enough.
Whenever I use free software for Windows like Gimp, Nvu/Kompozer web design editor, Open Office, Free computer games and Windows Movie Maker, I feel there are better paid alternative like Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Dreamweaver, Sony Vegas video editor, MS Office 2010, StarCraft II, Half-Life, Sims, Warcraft. The user interfaces seem a lot nicer and simpler to use then freeware in my experience.
The support for some free software is sometimes not very good since there is no phone number, forum or e-mail for technical support like paid software.
Although, commercial freeware like CCleaner which wants you to buy a license for technical support is pretty good, or Malwarebytes free version is a good anti-malware and spyware scanner,but lacks a real-time shield, website blocker, and scan scheduler which the paid version has.
Adobe Photoshop has technical support, and there are more courses at colleges, and books on how to use all of Photoshop's feature at an advance level.
I also heard only 3 active users maintain and update Gimp (Michael Natterer, Alexia Death and Martin Nordholts) according to ( http://www.gimpusers.com/news/00339-gimp-2-8-scheduled-q1-q2-2011 ) while a lot more programmers work on Photoshop, so bug fixes and updates are usually faster with Photoshop.
If I do a Google search for Photoshop Forum there are 128,000,000 results for it while Gimp Forum only has 3,040,000 results, so there are more free tutorials and a larger community for Photoshop compared to Gimp.
