I'd like to refine this, but the gist of it is that more often than not if you're hunting for a tool on the net to do something in Windows... the quality of a freeware product is better than that of a shareware one... where possible I don't like to have any shareware on my machine at all.
Perhaps part of the reason is that the motivation for freeware is to make the best possible product, while the motivation for shareware is to make money. If they can do it quick and dirty and pump it out and get dosh for it from the minimum investment - then that's the most suited to their needs.
