i hesitate to disagree with you, but in this case i have to -- i'm using primarily freeware synths in my music now. i didn't respond to this thread because i don't use things that work the way he wants (or maybe it's just that i don't think that way, so it's not occurring to me what to recommend?)

KVR audio is always posting about great freeware -- along with the stuff for money.

"If you want quality, pay for it"

That is absolutely not true.
There are literally hundreds of high quality free plugins available. Most of them for pc but some very good ones for the mac as well. Automat being one of them.
One of the highest quality free soft synths ever designed (according to reviews and user comments, that is) is Green Oak's "Crystal" and that's actually for both platforms. There's also u-he's Triple Cheese which sounds excellent.
If you want tons of extra features and high quality gui's then yea, that quality you usually DO have to pay for. But with the plethora of high quality freeware out there it is perfectly feesable to make just as good of tunes as (almost) anybody else and with out having to pay for shit except for a daw and a system to run it all on. I'm sure there are freeware daw's out there too but I don't know what.
I do know of some very cheap and still powerful daw's though. Cockos "Reaper" being the 1st one that comes to mind.