Do you think $21 per font is 'big bucks'? If you want Helvetica, you have to pay for Helvetica.
Besides, almost every computer comes with it loaded I thought.
Typophile
node 9997
FWIW, URW's Helvetica clone Nimbus Sans is freely available as part of their GPL font collection distributed with Ghostscript. But, as Yves mentioned with the standard Mac fonts, the free set does not include light or extended weights.
Captured from web.archive.org on 16 May 2005. view this capture