Unfair Software Upgrade Policies & Practices

MICROSOFT: Most software companies offer free, or cost of disc & mailing upgrades if you buy the old version within a short fixed period of time before the new version is introduced (often 45 - 60 days before the new version is ready, or at first public announcement of the new version). Often only a nominal fee of about $20. is usually charged to cover shipping & CD costs, or the upgrade may be free if the download is small enough to be available over the internet. Micro$oft calls this a "technology guarantee" & they offer it on upgrades to some products (Office XP), but not on others (Windows XP). In mid August 2001 I was about to purchase a new computer with Windows ME or 2000 as the operating system, but I was aware from all the media hype that the Windows XP operating system would be due out shortly (October 25/2001). With less than 2 months to go before the introduction, I phoned Micro$oft several times & they made it clear that so far they do not have a "technology guarantee" policy in place for retail versions of Win ME & Win 2000 & no mention of a "technology guarantee" policy could be found on their web site by me or by Micro$oft. Micro$oft suggested I either A: wait until XP comes out Oct. 25/2001, which is a stupid thing for a company to tell prospective buyers to hold off buying, or B: buy Windows ME or 2000 now & then in less than 2 months pay again to buy the retail upgrade from Windows ME or Windows 2000 (upgrade price might be 2/3rds to 3/4ths of full retail version of XP). This boggles my mind how a software company like Micro$oft can be so stupid (customer unfriendly) as to not have a "technology guarantee" policy in place for retail product this close to the introduction of a new product. I know that there are lots of people who would suggest a "C" option (to screw Micro$oft & borrow a current version from a friend until the XP version is released). Ultimately some of those who used this option "C", might never get around to upgrading to Windows XP & Micro$oft wouldn't get a sale at all from someone who was initially prepared to pay for a legitimate version. I have no problem paying for a legitimate version of software ONCE, but I do have a problem having to pay TWICE within a very short period of time, just because the manufacturer is transitioning from one version to the other & doesn't have a "technology guarantee" upgrade policy in place. As a side note, I learned from a local computer store that it was possible with the OEM versions of Windows ME & Windows 2000 (used for builders of new computers), to pay extra to purchase them with a "coupon" for upgrade to Windows XP ($60. CDN extra for couponed version of Win 2000 plus $20. US extra when mailing in for the XP Pro disc). That's a $90. CDN extra cost for the privilege of buying Win 2000 several weeks before the new Windows XP Pro is ready. Unfortunately 6 out of 7 presales employees at Micro$oft that I talked to were not even aware of this "coupon" version for OEM sales & denied it's existence. Between the lack of knowledge at Micro$oft about versions of operating systems with coupons they sell for "OEM" use & the lack of a "technology guarantee" for the "Retail" versions of current operating systems, I'm surprised that anybody bothers buying a Microsoft product during a transitional phase from one operating system to another. The logic of Micro$soft using this kind of marketing escapes me. Oh by the way, I did buy the OEM version of Windows 2000 with the upgrade coupon for XP & sent it in by the deadline, but to date (7 months later) I have not received the upgrade I paid for, so now I have to start chasing Micro$oft to get what I paid for. No wonder so many people love to hate Micro$oft.

DRAGON: On a similar note, when I purchased Dragon Naturally Speaking Preferred version 4 software for $179. CDN, Dragon told me they had no plans for version 5, but shortly after I purchased version 4 they did come out with version 5. Since voice recognition software is radically improving with each version (or maybe I should say that it is radically being debugged with each new version), I figured I should get the "upgrade" to version 5, but they wanted another $159. CDN, so I was almost paying all over again. They charged the same $159. upgrade to version 5, whether you were upgrading from version 3 or 4 & this seemed unfair to me (upgrade from version 4 should have cost far less). I no sooner bought the upgrade to version 5, when they came out with a version 6 & wanted another $159 CDN (main improvement in version 6 is that it's Windows XP compatible). Dragon went out of business & was sold to Lernout & Hauspie who soon afterwards went into Chapter 11 reorganization which might explain why they were trying to milk their user base for all they can get. They don't even offer a chargeable internet download for the upgrade to version 5, which would dramatically lower their cost of getting the upgrade to some customers who had high speed internet connections. The bottom line here is to learn as much about the upgrade policy as you can BEFORE you buy & let the manufacturer know if you think their upgrade policy is unfair or inappropriate. If manufacturers expect end users to continue operating with legitimate software, they have to provide smooth & reasonably priced upgrade policies. Price gouging is not acceptable. BTW Naturally Speaking software has now changed hands again & is owned by ScanSoft Inc. which has version 7 now. Judging from their web site, they have the very same poor approach to selling upgrades.

IS THE NEW SOFTWARE VERSION A BUG PATCH OR FEATURE IMPROVEMENTS?: Sometimes when a software company releases a chargeable new version, it is not much more than a bunch of bug fixes, with only a few new features to disguise it as a new release. It's my opinion that software companies should provide free bug fix patches until the product is working properly & only move forward to new versions of software with new features once all major bugs have been fixed in the old version. This policy would financial strap many software companies who don't know how to write software properly & it wouldn't give as much of an incentive for end users to upgrade to the new version, if the old one worked fine. So many software companies introduce a new version as a way to extract more money from their user base to pay for bug fixes of features that should have worked right in the first place. The interesting thing is that our society has come to expect software not to perform even close to flawlessly until nearly the end of the versions life cycle (if even then), at which point you upgrade to the new version with some new features & a bunch of new bugs. This philosophy flies in the face of traditional methods of doing business where a manufacturer has the product working properly near the beginning of it's life cycle. Frankly, these different attitudes within the computer software community make me wish I'd never gotten involved with computers. Some days I just want to dump my computer & software discs in a deep ocean & go live on a south Pacific Island like Tom Hanks in the movie "Castaway" & talk to my volleyball (Wilson). I think I'd have far less stress, more hair, lower cholesterol & definitely a better tan. In a couple hundred years, somebody will discover my computer at the bottom of the ocean, dry it off, boot it up & say to themselves, "what were these people thinking, how could they have ever survived with crappy software like that".

ON A POSITIVE NOTE: With so many con artists having gotten into the business of writing software programs, traditional types of crime rate are falling dramatically :-)  They can't throw you in jail for writing & selling a software program that doesn't work well (or can they?). About all that happens to the unscrupulous software company is that they apologize & offer you an upgrade that might work better (usually for additional money) & when it doesn't work much better, after they duped you for the second time, the software company goes out of business because they know you finally figured out that they can't write good software. Or they give you a free bug fix patch many months after you actually needed it, when the product is almost obsolete & you're creditors are knocking on the door because you couldn't deliver to your customers because the software didn't work right. The worse case scenario that can happen to software end users, is that the software company spins off the product to another company, while riding themselves of the responsibility of fixes & making additional money from the sale of that division. Prime examples would be Adaptec's spin off of the buggy Easy CD Creator software to Roxio, or Spruce Technologies spin off of the buggy SpruceUp software & other products to Apple, or Terran Technologies sale of the buggy Media Cleaner Pro software to Media 100 Inc. which then was sold off again to the Discreet division of Autodesk Inc., or Digital Processing Systems buyout by Leitch with subsequent reneging of software upgrades to Video Action software users (expertly swept under the carpet). So if you're criminally inclined or just have very few ethics, don't waste your time in the high risk business of robbing stores/banks/people etc., put your efforts into creating & selling partially-working software & get rich quick without serious risk. Or maybe create a new market by telling people that the world will come to a grinding halt on January 1 of next year if they don't buy your software solution for their computer (you can even fool IT experts in big business & governments with this Y2K ploy). There's a sucker born every minute who will gladly pay you for the "perceived" benefits of your software & this sucker will actually get excited about your newer version of software (hope springs eternal).

By Doug Hembruff.
Last updated October 16/2002.