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Seriously? I *just purchased this software and now I'm being asked to upgrade!?

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RoadKill:
It's a small company, and a big bit of complex, feature-rich software.
They need to feed their bottom line somehow. I'm on an old version of Media Center, and you know what, I don't care - it does exactly what I want it to do, still. That won't change. If I need a new version, I know where to come.
Would you even get this kind of audience with a bigger software company? No, you wouldn't - nobody would even talk to you.
They're trying to be reasonable. You chose the software with good reason, and after long research - suddenly now there's a new version, and the software you chose can't do the job? It can, and it always will. You don't need to upgrade.

struct:

hmmm, is there not a pricing structure that doesn't have such a quantum step in outcome for the first time purchaser? 

I am happy to pay my yearly upgrade to MC, money well spent.  But I appreciate the OP's point of view that he thought (innocently but incorrectly) that he was buying into something that he didn't quite get (a time of upgrades).  This would be an easily made mistake (zero blame to JR just a mistake I could see being made).  Once you join the system of upgrading, it is a great way to support development by hard working and passionate people.  However, there must be a way to have a smoother point of entry for the unlucky few, a way of not hurting JR but also a way of stopping people feeling unlucky.  JR don't have to have done anything wrong, nor have a process that is any way unfair for someone to be on the unlucky end of a calendar.  Maybe a statement of 9 months minimum free upgrades explicitly stated reduces confusion??

Craig

PS is there somewhere that I can donate $3 to the unlucky sod's fund so that we don't have to have these types of posts  [mine included] (kind of like the presidential election option with the tax return and JR get to choose whom to give the "you just missed the new version" upgrades and their posts get deleted immediately)

chriswatson:
I have to somewhat sympathize with the original post. On the surface it does seem like he "just missed out".

On the other hand, the "beta" really is a "beta". The final release will be on in a year or so and the really great part is the users get to help guide the release with feature requests and the JRiver team is great about being responsive.

Perhaps a partial solution would be to offer a software yearly maintenance fee, say.... $15 or so that gives you the right to any and all upgrades for a year? If your license lapsed you could still use the software but you wouldn't get any updates until you paid... say ... 50% or 60% of the current list price?

It would probably net out to about the same amount of money but it might be a more obvious way to indicate to the customers that they really need to think about a (small) ongoing cost, a latte a month or less, if they want to continue to get updates after the first year.

A minor nit that I do have is being surprised when JRiver closes off a major version, I don't recall seeing any public pre announcements. The reason this bothers me is I have some minor crash bugs that still affect me. It would be *REALLY* nice if 30 to 45 days prior to closing off the build JRiver could focus publicly on stability over new functionality and invite users to focus on that. Perhaps even issue a "pre-gold" release with that comment in the release notes. The reason is I want a STABLE build I can use while the next major release is being used. I had major stability issues with the final of release 15 and had to upgrade soon to 16. As a result I almost left using JRiver because I went through a 6 month or so period where JRiver 16 was crashing at least 2 or 3 times a day. I loved the audio quality but really hated the crashing.

MrHaugen:

--- Quote from: chriswatson on November 04, 2011, 07:53:29 am ---Perhaps a partial solution would be to offer a software yearly maintenance fee, say.... $15 or so that gives you the right to any and all upgrades for a year? If your license lapsed you could still use the software but you wouldn't get any updates until you paid... say ... 50% or 60% of the current list price?

--- End quote ---
So, the user might be very happy about receiving the new license this year. But what about next year, when this maintenance license expires right before the NEXT major version. It will be the same QQ all over. "this is not fair", "I was not told this would expire right before the next version", "why did you not extend it 10 more days", "I should get a much better discount or get it for free when I purchased so close to the beta" and so on.

No matter how you twist and turn this subject there will always be those lucky few who decides to take the plunge, and have to pay a bit extra shortly after to keep up with the versions. That is the risk of many purchases. But this is a choice every users have. I think the only thing that would prevent this is to offer lifetime upgrades. The product would then probably be ridiculously expensive to calculate profit for the lack of steady income. A few new users would be expected now and then, but no way near the stream of users as today. I would personally like this option, but the overall user base would suffer terribly in my opinion.

Jaguu:
Hi, welcome in the real world of IT. You may have noticed that whenever you buy a new pc, a new printer, a new mobile phone, a new tv set, you are already outdated, because a week or two later you will find new models on the market making your new purchase looking really old. Do you buy a new car every time a new model appears on the market? Probably not!

An invitation to upgrade is not a compulsion to ugrade. Nowadays you can spend all your time upgrading software products almost on a daily basis, you could get crazy about it. I disabled all auto-update functions of all sofware on my pc's, well except one - JRiver Media Center ;D

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