According to my experience, Empower 2 of HPLC or UPLC waters. That software is quite easy for method development.You can learn very easily. But you can't get it from net. It comes only with instrument. I think you should go with Empower 2.
each chromatographic instrument is operated with aid of software to either control, run sample, creat method , troubleshoot, and you dont need to download a chromatograhy software for method development, mostly method development depends on the analyte of interest, which for LC you have to select the require mobile phase for such analyte and determined the kind of elution, either Gradient or isocratic elution and lastly you determined the mobile phase flow rate for that analysis, I presently worked waters HPLC which uses Millenium 32 software
For the instrument useful manual you get that at the manufacture website, most of our chromatographic instument are agilent, which moslty i download soft copy of maintenance manual, application notes, operators manual etcs, you can as well use google website
Borwin software comes with JASCO HPLC system. This software has now obsolete by company. JASCO UK has now phased-out JASCO Borwin, With effect from 31st July 2007 we will now longer offer service or reinstallation on JASCO Borwin and JASCO PDA. The reason for this is that the modern platforms do not provide a stable environment for the older software products.
"Peak simple" software was posible to download from internet. This software is very simple, and when you want to connect it to GC o HPLC instrument you should buy analog/ digital converter. You can not to control all of the instruments with this software. Each HPLC instrument came with his own software like chromeleon of Dionex o turbochrom of Perkin Elmer and you should study each of them to work .
This question has no answer. The most important thing on HPLC or GC method development is your understanding of the principles of chromatography. What are you using as a tool is more related to what you feel confortable working with than anything else. But, and there is a huge but on that, if you´re looking for a artificial inteligence system to help in the development I know 2 that are quite helpfull.
EZCHrom and Chemstation are the two most commom softwares available (EZChrom has several sons like the ones been used in Thermo, HItachi and Agilent systems), but it doesn´t matter, if your goal is analytical method development any software will do the job, so the decision will be on which one you think is the more friendly one, and explore the resources on it. The only advice I can give to you on this matter is pick one that has a good 3D view, or a real time correlation between the chromatogram and the wavelenght decision. This will make your life quite easier. Cheers