I'm shocked that such a new product already has a pay upgrade, and a steep one at that. $50 to upgrade a $80 product seems expensive, and I just bought 2.5 three months ago. It doesn't seem like there is any grace period, either. They are charging more for an upgrade to my three month old purchase than VMWare is currently charging for a complete product. Does anyone else agree with me? What type of support can we expect for 2.5 in the future? I already didn't get support questions returned when 2.5 was the current release, so what does that mean I'll get in the future?
Yes, there was a whole long thread about it... I, like many, just got parallels a few months ago for 80 dollars yet can only get use out of 30 of those dollars for an upgrade. Such expensive upgrades are not uncommon among software providers, and parallels said that too much work went into it for it to be another free upgrade. I find this annoying, and 50 dollars is too much IMO, but I don't work at parallels... P.S. I believe there was a one month period for people who bought the older version to get the new one free. P.P.S. Are you sure you want to upgrade right now? Lots of people are having problems with v. 3.0, maybe you should wait a couple months for a more reliable version. (And you may actually have more 3D support with your current version than v.3! Depending on what apps/games you are running...)
If you go to the store and buy a loaf of bread and a quart of milk do they discount it because you bought a loaf of bread and a quart of milk 3 months ago? I bought a Harley-Davidson FatBoy in 1997. In 1999 I bought a Road King. I didn't get a discount. 2 years ago I had a heart attack and it was expensive. Cost a fortune. Last week I thought I broke a finger. Should I get a discount when I have it checked out? I paid $65.00 for cable services last month. Should I get a discount this month because I paid for cable just a month ago? The answer to each is, no free ride. Life is like that.
Well, we don't have to get into a whole discussion here, but I just want to bring a difference between your examples and parallels. Parallels version 2 is not a consumed good or a service that you have to buy every once in a while; it is the ability to forever run windows on mac. Nadler is saying that Parallels should be like a trade-in where you get the newer version with a discount of the price of the original. I guess Parallels considers the version 2 we payed $80 for to only be worth $30 now.
If that is the analogy then it never loses it's value and is still worth every dollar spent. No - we know now from your claim that the original product is still worth the original price because it never wears out and runs forever. What Parallels has said is you can have another one similar to it but that costs less than the original. There is no trade in. You keep them both forever. So you buy it and now you have two versions, both of which will run forever and you can choose which to run, or run them alternately. Maybe you need to work on your model - it doesn't support your case.
So give version 2 back to Parallels and get version 3 for free. Ever heard of a car? It is supposed to work without a time limit (like parallels), but you can trade it in for a newer version/model. The current price for your car (in parallels case of version 2 this would be 30 dollars, even though it still runs [yes, limitless run time does not mean forever constant price]) is removed from the price of the car you want to get.
Really bad analogy. The car has value to third parties - old versions of Parallels do not. I mentioned this was a poor model you were chasing earlier and it remains so.
The whole upgrade pricing idea on software existed for quite a long time. Why is Parallels getting the flak for following this tradition? Look at upgrade pricing for software from, ooh, I don't know, Microsoft? Adobe? Do you give back your copy of Windows XP to Microsoft to get Windows Vista when you upgrade? I didn't think so. You keep the license for Windows XP, and get a license for Vista for reduced price. As for the car thing... no, it's not really considered to work 'forever'. There's something called 'value depreciation' that starts ticking the moment you buy it. If you ride it sufficiently enough, the effective value of your car will hit zero. Meanwhile, car is a physical thing you can trade. Software.. well, you didn't 'buy' the software itself, but only the license to 'use' it. Software companies generally don't 'reclaim' the licenses they sold, although it may be possible that you can sell the license to someone else.
I don't agree with how they are treating their customers for three reasons. 1. The upgrade price is too much for an application. $50 for an $80 product is very expensive percentage-wise. For example, Adobe Photoshop CS3 is $649 new, $199 to upgrade. 2. I think the upgrade payment is required too soon after the original products were released. Windows XP was out for years before Vista was released. Same with Photoshop. Same with OS X Tiger. Maybe if you named other products with over 60% upgrade prices for a product released 12 to 18 months ago I'd be a little happier. However, I don't think Parallels was very stable when it was first released. 3. Parallels 2 doesn't seem to have been a reliable product, so 3 is almost a bug fix in a large regard. Windows XP SP2 was free. Parallels support has also been lacking. Just my opinions. I think the upgrade timing and pricing is out of whack with the software industry. It will make me less likely to buy Parallels. I'll just buy the full version of VMWare now for less than my supposed "upgrade" to Parallels. Parallels just doesn't seem to be interested in customer retention, with the upgrade pricing and with their support. They of course have the right to market their product however they want.
I still can't wrap my arms around the notion that this is a bug ridden, faulty product. I have installed SUSE Linux, XP SP 2 and Vista in various configurations and have have had no major issues. I find it to be one of the most stable pieces of software I have ever used, and well worth the money.
Worth the money for the features, yes. Stable, no. 4128 hangs kexd, makes you hardboot osx most the time you just launch the GUI. The disk format is not backwards compatible, proprietary. Kernel panics also happen quite frequently, and the product hasn't been tested enough on the newer Santa Rosa Macs.
