THOUGHT: Buy the best software/hardware for everyone unless you have a really good reason to get the free / open source version.
If you pay a person $100k per year, $2-3k in software is well worth it. Not instituting this was a mistake I made when we started EmSense and am continuously remedying. We had as many people as possible use Open Office, google docs, GIMP and other "free" products. Our IT department supporting them, having to resend .odt files as .doc multiple times per week and dealing with the little bugs and oddities which are in the software, cost us significantly more than the cost of the full price versions.
vs
Additionally, people's self image was that they were "second tier" because the sales people got Microsoft products. Not only was productivity lower, but many people were frustrated daily because the open source policy got in the way of them being personally successful.
NOTE: The one exception would be for dedicated hardware such as video processing where many people may need the same, very expensive, software for a small amount of time. In that case, it still makes sense to get the best, but also to either license it so everyone can use it or install it on a dedicated computer.
