What's the value when it's free?

Free advice is worth exactly what you paid for it: nothing. But is that true? If I recommend a technique to help your high-end system sound better and it works for you, what was that worth? What you paid for that advice - which was nothing? I struggle with the idea that we get what we pay for. In fact, I think that's simply wrongheaded. We struggle with the notion that a power amplifier that costs $1,000 could ever sound as good as one that costs $10,000 - yet it's easily possible because both are expensive enough to be able to sound great. iTunes is a free music management program and it's far better than many similar programs you pay for. No, it's not high-end and was never meant to be, but it does illustrate my point. Our up and coming high-end version of iTunes, eLyric, is high-end and and also free - yet some people struggle with using it for precisely that reason: it's free so how good could it be? So what's the value of something when it's free? I don't know, maybe we should Google the answer.