I am guilty of using illegit software in the past but realised that to run an ethical, legal and honest business I had to go legit.

This created a big problem for me, most of my software was pirated, and as a startup business I didn't have the funds to purchase what I needed. Photoshop, Illustrator, dreamweaver, Flash, 3DS Max 5 and WS_FTP Pro would have cost me $9500+. This is a lot of money to come up with upfront.

I purchased a few must-have items like Uleads Photoimpact, which is a cheap raster art editor and a second hand copy of Adobe Illustrator 9.0 from a designer friend (this was legit) Also Swish 2.0 (Flash's cheap brother) and Color Impact. All for $500.

I then found myself looking into free open source software and have never looked back. All of the open source software I have used thus far has been better to use than the pirated products.

The free open source products I use on an amost daily basis are:

Crimson Editor for hand coding
Filezilla for remote site maintenance
Terragen for 3D landscapes
Blender3D for all other 3D design

I have also heard great things about GIMP being almost as good as photoshop and other fantastic free open source software.

If you are looking at going legit then I suggest you check out open source software first.