Software recommendations tend to pass cause they're often 'how' to do things rather than a straight off "What do i need?". Shopping recommendations are bad cause firstly, they go stale (software dosen't in most cases), and they indicate a certain lack of homework. 

I can dust off a two year old software rec question, and most of the software there would be still available in some fashion. I can't really say the same for hardware, if the answer is specific enough.