Not worth the rental fee - MarkBernstein

It's nothing to do with rental: software updates cost money. Whether you're updating Word or Photoshop or EndNotes or Flash, from time to time you're going to have to pay for some upgrades.

The only thing that's at all unusual about Tinderbox upgrades is that we provide additional upgrades for a year, rather than 30 or 90 days.

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Thursday, June 29 2006 @ 01:06 PM PDT

Not worth the rental fee - Pygmalion

On the contrary, it's clear that virtually every other developer on the planet has figured out that charging an annual fee for updates, major or minor, is a lousy business plan and undermines customer loyalty. Most of us would rather pay a reasonable fee that is based on performance, ie. the size and importance of the upgrade, rather than an arbitrary milestone like 365 days. Why should I commit to an application, especially a far from finished one one with a steep learning curve, when I know its going to keep costing me a substantial percentage of the original purchase price every year ad infinitum. I understand the developer needs to make a living, but how do I know the next major improvement isn't going to be 13 months - and 200 bucks - from now?
I'll stick to Devonthink, thank you very much.

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Thursday, June 29 2006 @ 04:26 PM PDT

Not worth the rental fee - MarkBernstein

Nobody forces you to upgrade.

If you don't need to upgrade today, don't! If the new version doesn't offer you sufficient value, use the old one!

If you're planning to spend the next few months touring Provence or rebuilding New Orleans and you don't need Tinderbox, you can upgrade whenever you like.

I think you simply misunderstand.

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Friday, June 30 2006 @ 08:49 AM PDT

Not worth the rental fee - ruMac

Mark,

I think the issue here is not whether to upgrade or not, but what constitutes a rational for upgrading. The current policy for Eastgate is that you buy the program, then you rent an upgrade license good for one year. Depending on when you purchased your upgrade license you may or may not be able to upgrade for free, and the quantity of upgrades may or may not be significant one depending upon the development of the software. This is far different from the more accepted practice of charging for numerical upgrades, i.e., Tinderbox 3 then Tinderbox 4, etc.

Frankly my ability to obtain free upgrades stopped at 3.02! A very weird version to max out on and meaning I missed out on many of the internal fixes introduced in 3.03-3.06. Improvements that I think should be expected and FREE for someone who spent $150 for the program.

Tinderbox is a magnificent program, but its licensing is problematic for me and I am very weary of getting caught again with a program whose company may charge me $90 to get more internal updates. My suggestion, please change your license policy to be version based.

Robert

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Monday, July 17 2006 @ 09:59 AM PDT

Our upgrade policy is MORE GENEROUS than what you're proposing! - MarkBernstein

Apparently, you purchased Tinderbox 2.3.4 around the end of 2004. You year of free upgrades include * Tinderbox 2.4.0 * Tinderbox 2.4.1 * Tinderbox 2.5.0 *Tinderbox 2.5.1 * Tinderbox 3.0 * Tinderbox 3.0.1 and *Tinderbox 3.0.2

If we used a "major version" upgrade policy, you'd have received three FEWER upgrades!

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Tuesday, July 18 2006 @ 06:47 AM PDT

Our upgrade policy is MORE GENEROUS than what you're proposing! - Doug-Ray

I can see both sides of this argument. Tinderbox is a great program, but it's a niche program that has a small but dedicated user base. I can see why Eastgate needs to charge a premium for yearly upgrades, because it's a difficult program to get into (which keeps the number of users down), but once you do, you're probably OK paying the annual fee to use all the latest features. On the other hand, if it were cheaper and if it did have a different (more standard?) upgrade policy, perhaps they would get more users, but I imagine that someone at Eastgate has done some analysis of this when they decided on the price. My own experience with Tinderbox is that I paid for it, but I never used it as much as I thought I would. I'm curious to see if the new features would make me use it more, but because I'm a casual user I can't see purchasing an upgrade right now. I keep thinking that if the renewal price was a bit lower (perhaps ~$50) I would probably upgrade, who knows for sure. Anyway, like the man says, if you don't want it, don't buy it. And if you really get into it, you probably won't mind buying it. It's the casual users who must sit on the fence.

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Tuesday, July 18 2006 @ 10:15 AM PDT

Our upgrade policy is MORE GENEROUS than what you're proposing! - sasha_efi_dotmac

Same here; I can see both sides. However, I'm on the user side of money :)

Right now, I'm afraid to even test out the new features before deciding if I want to shell out 90 USD for the next upgrade. What if I don't like it -- how do I return to my 'paid' version? What if no major upgrades come for another 12.5 months? Then I'll have to pay again.

My choice -- step out of the upgrade plan altogether. I'm stuck at 3.5.4; so be it. When I bought Tinderbox in October 2006, it was version 3.0.0. If I had followed the upgrade cycle, I'd have already paid 180 extra USD for two years of minor upgrades between full versions. Yeah, I know -- I don't have to pay. So I don't. But normally, I'd expect to have paid through to version 4.0.0. Only I haven't.

Also, seems like I have to pay another 39.95 USD for documentation in a separate book, to get the full value of my 198 USD original investment (or was it 145 back then?) and the upgrades. But wait; wouldn't the book be out of date by the time I upgrade the program? Or is the book not documentation, but a world view, and thus I don't really need it to understand the program? Maybe.

I like the program, and I have used it a bit here and there, but as a casual user, I'm not happy with the payment scheme. The developer would have gotten more cash out of me long-term with a more sensible way to upgrade. I like paying Mac developers, usually :)

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Tuesday, April 24 2007 @ 11:42 AM PDT