Jack, I agree that the commercial analogy isn't an exact fit. It does illustrate the overal point. However, I'm unable to follow the logic as to how your position along with Mike's benefits any one other than the end user. The percentage of serious shoppers (soon to be buyers) that end up actually purchasing a product or service from a specific vendor ranges between 3% - 25%. The difference is due to many factors but mainly due to price. The higher the ticket the lower the *closing ratio*. Now nearly all the serious shoppers end up buying the product or service but do so from different vendors or end up with a slightly different product or service. Your 10% is right on the money. So while in college the student in your example uses, for free, someone elses software to benefit their own learning. The other nearly 900,000 non-paying users, who opted out of the upgrade, also benefit free of charge from someone elses hard work. Many of that large group will never buy the software when their need is gone. Most of us resist spending money unless we must - why should we? The only real beneficiary is the non-paying end user. Having said all that; if a developer chooses to market software that way then I have no problem. They chose the model and the financial risk is theirs. But my opinion is that if it is such a good model for merchandising software profitably everyone would be falling all over each other making it happen. As yet, I don't see it happening. Mark Ring > >Mark, > > That exposure "helps" in hooking people into the software. Commercial > software makers are in the business of sell upgrades. Your analogy doesn't > work because there is no way to resell the 30 seconds from 8:04:00 to > 8:04:30 on Tusday September 5, 2006 once it has passed. If get a pirated > copy of AutoCAD while in college and then go to work for business that is > concerned about it license issues or even if you go into a private > practice you're more likely to buy a copy then continue to use a pirated > copy. More importantly if the SW maker tightens the controls the controls > on the software between versions you might shell out for the upgrade. So > those 998,000 pirates if 10% buy an upgrade at $100 a pop that's > $10,000,000 in revenue. You can't compare the lost $499 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Get a free email address at http://www.ippimail.com and support your favorite charity without it costing you a penny. Now with 200mb storage and Google-powered search! Feelgood email!