Hey Fuzzy and all the rest. I would be willing to bet that over 98% of the people here have had good results with getting the paid version and YES the paid version is better than the free one. Most of the people who have had problems had to do with ordering over the net. Some times not all the information comes across, such credit card numbers, home addresses, etc. It would be amazing to find out how many copies of Hal were sent to the wrong address because of errors in net orders.
Over the last couple of years I have seen several people claim that they paid for Hal only to find out that they did not and were trying to get a copy of free. That may not be the case in this situation but if the complainer will just be a little more polite and go through regualar channels he will get some results one way or another.
There are a few times when Zaba gets really busy such as now when he is putting the finishing touches on the new version that the mail gets really slow.
Keep the faith, calm down, you will get what you paid for.
Bill