Companies who give a way free E-books and software to promote their stuff?

[froggyboy604]

I remember when a cereal brand gave away free Monopoly games for the PC to promote their sugary cereal. It was kind of cool if you were a kid who liked monopoly.

I notice a lot of websites, and some hardware company give away free software and e-books.

But, I don't really like it when my thumb drive, or new external hard drive come loaded with software, ebooks, etc that I probably won't use like Backup software, encryption since CTRL+C/V and password prottected zip folders are good enough for my needs.

I notice a lot of the e-books seem to be just using other peoples ideas or very basic knowledge about something like web promotions like submit to search engines, write e-magazines, do link exchanges, etc. The software can be pretty useful like CCleaner, Opera, and Avant, etc.