There is a great deal of trial software out on the web these days. It isn’t even that hard to find.
Adobe offers it’s whole family of products up for download as does Corel and Microsoft .
As an individual user I’d argue it possible to do most things I’d want (disregarding profitability in some cases). If you’re an individual user trying to work out what tools suit your style of publishing. The above are a good place to start.
If like me you’re a programmer there may be some other platforms that are of interest. However, Apple, Microsoft and Linux reward users of their operating systems with free tools in this area. Well to an extent. Codewarrior provides a platform for most programming languages though I haven’t used it extensively (this version at all).
I’ve been hunting around for database development suites. Borland Interbase is one that I’ve used.
The point I’m trying to make is that this software is more available than it used to be now that most people can make use of relatively high speed broadband. When I started out looking for freeware and trials the type of software detailed above, was only really attainable on the covers of magazines. So perhaps, it is the face of business that is changing?
You may notice that much of the above software is that used for business. Much of the academic software used by universities, although free, requires an academic license.
This also looks reasonable.
http://www.quark.com/
A 60 day trial is pretty good and long enough to complete a short project.
Personally, I still use the same tools I always did.