Most of the software we review and recommend at ATMac is created by individuals or companies with just a few employees. This "indy" software, as it's known, is usually able to be tested before you buy it and is very reasonably priced, but if you want a bunch of different pieces of software it can still add up quickly. Here are a bunch of websites which offer discounts on different pieces of software at different times.

MacUpdate Promo have a different deal every day with a large discount on the software price. They also have an extended sales page which lists software available at a smaller discount for a longer time. If you check out the extended sales be sure to look for the "Show me" dropdown and select each option in turn to make sure you're shown all the available software on sale.

MacHeist intermittently offer bundles of several pieces of software for sale at heavily discounted prices. Some of it requires that you solve an Internet-based "treasure hunt" type activity before you can purchase. The answers to the treasure hunt are always posted on their forums within a few hours of the puzzle being announced, but it can take an awful lot of forum reading to find the right code to use. This may or may not be worth the trouble, depending on how much free time you have and how much you like weird puzzles.

Mac Bundle Box is a software discounting website, intermittently offering a bundle of software which can be purchased at one low price.

MacZOT have a different deal every day with a large discount on the software price.

TheMacBundles.com bills itself as the "farmer's market for software." A new site also offering a bundle of software which can be purchased at one low price.

The Mac Santa bundle has been around for two years now each December. Last year Mac Santa offered a two-tiered discount system that takes 20% off of a particular batch of software each day and then 10% off all previously featured software until the end of the promotion on December 24th.

MacToSchool was offered in 2007 just before the USA school year commenced. The 2007 bundle offered a variety of programs which are mostly related to education/school stuff but many of which would be useful to anybody. No longer available.

dealmac doesn't offer discounts themselves but they do offer a central place that lets people know about discounts of many things including Mac software. Many of the discounts listed above are listed in their Mac software category, as well as other one-off discounts they find out about. Dealmac also offer a bunch of other categories which may interest readers, including Apple hardware and more general computer-related supplies.

I've purchased a lot of my software this way - using evaluation versions until I've found them for sale at a price I can afford. If you're wanting to buy software it may be worth your while to subscribe to some of these websites and see if what you want comes up. Tell me how you go!

- Ricky Buchanan

Today's MacUpdate Promo is for the English version of GhostReader, which they're offering at 38% off - US$24.95 - until midnight tonight USA time. That's about the next 21 hours according to the count-down on their website.

So if you were thinking about buying GhostReader, I suggest today is a good day for it!

Website: MacUpdate Promo

- ATMac

Great news for all users of text-to-speech technology, with the low prices for Infovox iVox voices being extended permanently. The "Peter" British English voice is still the best text-to-speech voice I have heard to date. I wish they would bring out a Russian voice though - I'm learning Russian and it would help a lot with the pronounciation!

Amsterdam - 15 October 2007 - Acapela Group and AssistiveWare today announced that based on the overwhelming response on the Give Your Mac a Voice Promotion, Acapela Group has decided to permanently lower the price of the Infovox iVox voices, which can be used with virtually any speech using application on Mac OS X. Originally introduced as a solution for the low volume accessibility market, it was found that also many educators and consumers wanted to use these naturally sounding voices to listen to documents, create personal podcasts and to help struggling readers. With the new prices the best voices ever on the Mac are now within reach of educators, students, people with disabilities as well as any other Mac user who likes to hear his Macintosh speak.

With the imminent introduction of Mac OS X Leopard, with its enhanced support for third-party add-on speech synthesizers, more people then ever will be able to enjoy the benefits of the natural-sounding Infovox iVox voices as Acapela Group will be able to introduce voices for even more languages. Voices are already available for the following languages: American English, British English, Finnish, French, Canadian French, German, Italian, Danish, Dutch, Flemish, Spanish, American Spanish, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Norwegian and Swedish. All of these voices are Universal Binary and compatible with Mac OS X 10.3.9 and higher (including Mac OS X 10.5 aka Leopard).

The Infovox iVox voices, once installed on the computer, appear in the Speech panel of the System Preferences and can be used by any application that has speech functionality, including Preview, TextEdit, Mail, VoiceOver, Microsoft Word (through its Speech toolbar), VisioVoice, Proloquo, GhostReader, Acrobat, AppleScript, Kurzweil 3000 for Macintosh (version 3.0.4. and higher), TextHelp Read and Write Gold for Mac (version 2.1 and higher) and many others.

Infovox iVox voices are sold per language with each language consisting of one or more male and/or female voices. All languages contain the American English Heather voice as a bonus. Starting today, all languages except the Scandinavian ones are available for a suggested retail price of US$ 99 in North America and 99 Euro excluding VAT everywhere else. This is for the first language. Additional language packs are available for a suggested retail price of US$ 49.50 in North America and 49.50 Euro excluding VAT everywhere else. Scandinavian languages are available for a suggested retail price of 219 euro excluding VAT and as an additional language for 109.50 euro excluding VAT. Multi-user and educational classroom and school licenses are also available for Infovox iVox.

Infovox iVox is also available bundled with AssistiveWare and ConvenienceWare products. For educators, students and anyone else who wants to get the most out of the excellent voices, Infovox iVox is available as a bundle with GhostReader, the selection and document reader with iPod export, for 109 Euro/US$. For Mac users with vision impairments, Infovox iVox is included with VisioVoice for 249 Euro/US$ excluding VAT. For people who cannot speak, Infovox iVox is now included with Proloquo for 249 Euro / 299 US$.

Read the full press release.

- Ricky Buchanan
(Via AssistiveWare News.)