There are times when my professional affiliations force me to temper my screeds and flames, but right now I am highly agitated trying to activate a piece of very common software via an online commerce process. This process is proving to be so broken, so expensive, and so convoluted that I found myself pushed by simple survival online to a free cloud based solution.
Four days later and I am very close to declaring I will never return to the former incumbent solution because their pricing model is so onerous and the free attacker is actually more technically elegant.
Rant over. But if you are an old style software incumbent accustomed to a cash cow based on per-PC-licenses, you are toast. I’ve seen consumer after consumer defect when they take their $350 netbook, configure it, and balk at a software license that is as expensive in some cases as their total hardware cost.
Fix the disconnected model and the cloud juggernaut will keep rolling.
would that your professional affiliations didn’t forestall such screeds…
I’ve got a computer I’m fearing updating to Windows 7 because I know the “enterprise software” update will probably be a trip down a rocky road best not travelled.
I’ve gone over to using a few open source solutions for things I never thought I would. Stuff like image editing, using gimpshop instead of photoshop (because our IT dept can’t figure out how to free up any of the 20 or 30 unused adobe license that are laying around unused).