Little did I know that IDA has a free starter version. That's what i am talking about. It only works for x86 processors. But that is what I got. So no trouble there. You can't do any scripting with the free version. It also does not perform decompilation. That is okay by me.
Turns out there is also a Home version of IDA. I guess you could call that a "lite" version. It adds the scripting ability. You can also get it for some processor other than x86. They are working on decompilers in this edition of the software.
Now if there is any question as to what the heck IDA does, it is a disassembler. It will take programs (exexcutables in binary format) and "disassemble" them into Assembly language. That makes the programs easier to read and understand. Not quite as useful as a decompiler which will take you all the way back to source code. But it is a first step.
