Re: Re: City Navigator - How Often Updated?

From: Reg (news_at_g4ens.fsnet.co.uk)
Date: 07/18/04 

Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2004 23:39:19 +0100

"JAC" <techguy94-at-mchsi-dot-com@> wrote in message
news:kl9ef05iltqi5bahdpkdo13g6cml8c88ad@4ax.com...
> What does how long you've owned it have to do with their development
> costs to improve the product.

I think that you've missed the point of development costs.

I've been involved with selling and writing PC software since 1978.
The first version always costs a lot to produce and market, so has a
high selling price. As the market starts to saturate less new
customers will pay the higher price, so the first time price drops.
Later it drops again as the market saturates at that price. And so
on....

The cost of producing an update should be significantly less that
producing a new product, so lower prices for new customers is
reasonable by this time.

However, for an existing customer upgrading, (s)he has already paid an
initial high price, so the price of an upgrade should reflect the
lower cost of producing that upgrade, as they have already contributed
to the initial costs.

An old customer that has bought many upgrades should pay even less for
each upgrade, because (s)he has contributed much more to the overall
cost of production and there are by then even more customers to spread
the production costs.

However with a monopoly like Microsoft, any price can, and will be,
charged.

Overcharging is one of the main reasons for folk to copy software and
'give' it to friends. As Microsoft and others overcharge their repeat
order customers, many concider the high price a rip-off, so as
Microsoft is cheating them, they concider it is reasonable to cheat on
Microsoft.

> It isn't like your current version breaks, requiring you to upgrade.

No it many not break, but it will often be faulty from new. So an
existing customer should be entitled to a free upgrade to correct
those faults.

There was a time when software was upgraded free of any charge, when
corrections to faults were found. This was before the internet was
available for 'free' downloaded upgrades and floppy disks had to be
posted to the customer, or their dealer.

When I've developed software and later my customer or myself
discovered a fault, I've always corrected the fault at no cost to my
customer.

Reg

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