Software and HDR

That whole HDR thing. still not sure im diggin it. Went to the Two Rivers Photography club meeting last friday night and the photo that won 1st prize was a shitty looking HDR "photo". There was nothing to it that reflected an actual photo at all. it looked 100% cartoonish and the closer i got to it the more retarded it looked. I do think HDR can be used to make better photos but there is a line were it goes from photo to ... something entirely different. From what ive heard Photomatix is one of the better programs for merging HDR shots but im not a big fan of paying for programs unless i really need too. I did a Google search for "HDR open source" and found a free HDR program. Unfortunately it didnt work so well with my Windows 7 64-bit OS. Ive installed it on my other WinXP machine [32 bit] and my laptop, but i havent actually done any testing on those yet.