Smartphone or not -- though if you don't have a smartphone, I'm not sure you're reading this -- you still have access to free apps for your desktop. Google's Chrome has a full service Web Store offering thousands of apps, which quickly install and uninstall into the browser, which  install and uninstall in seconds Open a second tab on Chrome, choose the Web store and you'll find tools, newspaper apps and games -- most for free. For kicks I found my favorite old video game (Asteroids), a New York Times app and a Huffington Post app. (Both need improvement, but they're superior to the straight browser experience.) And if my netbook can't get a signal while I'm on the train, I run Read Later Fast which caches Web pages to view without a connection. They're were all free. There's also a Charlie Sheen app. But let's not go there.