Are there any facts about compare and merge software that end-user might miss? Sure! For instance, it's not hard to find a absolutely free compare tool. I'm sure you already have it, there are some diff command in both Windows and UNIX systems. But it's a better idea to use some programs with well designed interface, rich feature set and inexpensive.

What tool to buy depends on your requirements and consider investing in the tool which will support all your possible business roles for your long business life.

First, it's sure up to you, but you should like to program interface, if you don't like it, you will not use it as effective as possible. That is the rule for all software, but for compare and merge tools, it may play a key role. Find the program which has an intuitive interface, you will need to manage many functions to compare and merge text, so it's important. Start from the viewing screenshots suggesting by authors, if you like the screenshot, then you will probably like the actual program.

The next thing to consider is documentation and support. Compare and merge tool deals with sophisticated compare methods, there should be a lot of various options, checkboxes in compare program, that will indicate if program should take into account some certain changes. Find a program with good documentation, learn it carefully, it will help you to work better with compare tool, much better and much faster.

As for support, then it's really important for compare tool, as you will need to compare various file formats and it's very important that authors add a support popular and new file formats quickly. You will save hours if necessary plug-ins will be built in the program.

The next step. Consider, what possible roles you will need compare software for. Is it quality control? Will you need to share information with others? What kind of files you will need to compare? Will you compare just local files or network files or maybe saved web-pages. Will you need a merge function? What kind of automation will you need?

One of the most important aspect is if you will need (sure you will need) to integrate program into your environment and in what way. For instance, you might need compare tool to be integrated into the context menu for two files or folders. Or you are running a document management system and it's necessary for compare tool to be run from this document management system. Typically, it's enough for compare tool to have a command line interface, but sometime it is required to run as a COM object. It's better to check it our before purchasing.

By the way, do you need a compare tool at all? There might be a compare function built in your Office text editors, such as Word. This function is not designed well, but it is good enough to start with. If you are choosing a compare and merge tool for large business then consider hosted solutions, that would allow you to do a server installation of compare utility and run it remotely.