On 18/04/2011 17:07, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Sun, 17 Apr 2011 15:50:10 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>
>> Meh. I remember when you couldn't *get* software without paying money
>> for it! :-P
>>
>> $20 for a word processor isn't expensive. $200 is.
>
> Then you must be older than you claim, because freeware has been around
> nearly as long as computing has been.

I don't know about freeware. When I was a kid, "shareware" was very 
popular. Every issue of Amiga Format would come loaded down with useful 
little utilities that people had written, which you were /supposed/ to 
send money for if you use it regularly. I don't personally know of 
anybody who actually sent a cheque for 4 CHF or whatever to the remote 
country where the author lived.

Of course, back then distribution was kind of a problem. It costs money 
to mail 3" disks around the place. Not to mention that the disks 
themselves used to cost actual money. (By contrast, today you can buy a 
blank CD for literally pence.)

The Internet transformed all of that, of course. It wouldn't surprise me 
if that's why Linux happened when it did. What would have been one 
student's toy proof-of-concept OS kernel became an international 
phenomenon. I suspect without the net it would have been infeasible.

> $200 isn't very much money if you have it.  We've been over that before.

OK, so apparently $200 is currently roughly £120. (Which still doesn't 
take into account average incomes, average cost of living, etc., which 
presumably also differs between the UK and the US.) Even so, it still 
seems like a hell of a lot of money for a program that doesn't even *do* 
very much and isn't especially complicated.

Silly me, I'm thinking that prices have something to do with what it 
costs to produce something. This is the 21st century. Prices are driven 
by how much you can rip people off and get away with it...

> But as Darren said, if you don't want to pay $200 for it, don't - use a
> free alternative.  But don't be surprised if you discover that the free
> version doesn't have the same features as the $200 one does or can't read
> the files that people send you.

I *do* use one of the free alternatives. At home, anyway. At work, I use 
what my employer provides. More to the point, I have to *support* what 
my employer provides, which is why it's so infuriating that there's no 
documentation. [Which is how this discussion started in the first place.]

Of course, OpenOffice has no documentation either. But then you're just 
grateful to be getting a reasonably good bit of software for free...

Post a reply to this message