These days, hardware and software is very inexpensive compared to time. I love the idea behind free software, but sometimes it's just too expensive to choose.
In the university context I've found that there is a lot of free software that works good enough or sometimes even better than commercial products. If you factor in that you still can use that particular program after you leave, it becomes a big plus.
That's very true. For example, if I need to use an image editor, Photoshop is the only thing I would consider. It's inexpensive ($35 for a month subscription), but more importantly it's easy to hire people that know it well. It's also well supported and documented.