A fair point, but if you pay for a subscription and then don't use it, that would be poor value too. If you want free information there are usually better ways of getting it than as one of the extras on a paid-for site, either on a genuinely free site or through the good offices of kind souls such as other Rootschatters who do have subscriptions or access to fiche or other non-online sources.
As some of the earlier posts have said, it depends on exactly what records you need to use, and how much you are likely to use them, and other variables such as transcripts v scanned images etc etc.
Mean_genie
