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SILICON SILIC CHIP www.siliconchip.com.au Publisher/Editor Nicholas Vinen Technical Editor John Clarke – B.E.(Elec.) Technical Staff Jim Rowe – B.A., B.Sc. Bao Smith – B.Sc. Tim Blythman – B.E., B.Sc. Nicolas Hannekum – Dip.Elec.Tech. Advertising Enquiries Glyn Smith Mobile 0431 792 293 glyn<at>siliconchip.com.au Regular Contributors Allan Linton-Smith Dave Thompson David Maddison – B.App.Sc. (Hons 1), PhD, Grad.Dip.Entr.Innov. Geoff Graham Associate Professor Graham Parslow Dr Hugo Holden – B.H.B, MB.ChB., FRANZCO Ian Batty Phil Prosser – B.Sc., B.E.(Elec.) Cartoonist Louis Decrevel loueee.com Former Cartoonist Brendan Akhurst Founding Editor (retired) Leo Simpson – B.Bus., FAICD Silicon Chip is published 12 times a year by Silicon Chip Publications Pty Ltd. ACN 626 922 870. ABN 20 880 526 923. All material is copyright ©. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the written consent of the publisher. Subscription rates (Australia only) 6 issues (6 months): $65 12 issues (1 year): $120 24 issues (2 years): $230 Online subscription (Worldwide) 6 issues (6 months): $50 12 issues (1 year): $95 For overseas rates, see our website or email silicon<at>siliconchip.com.au Recommended & maximum price only. Editorial office: Unit 1 (up ramp), 234 Harbord Rd, Brookvale, NSW 2100. Postal address: PO Box 139, Collaroy Beach, NSW 2097. Phone: (02) 9939 3295. ISSN: 1030-2662 Printing and Distribution: Editorial Viewpoint Most software is a product, not a service Software offered “as a service” provides benefits almost entirely to the companies producing the software and not for their customers. I’ve complained about constant updates in this column before. Updates are a selling point of ‘software as a service’, but they rarely fix the bugs that are plaguing us or add valuable features. New features that are actually useful (the minority) could easily be rolled into a one-time annual or semi-annual update. I like having the option to decide if it is worthwhile to pay a couple of hundred dollars for the latest version of the software based on the claimed improvements. Why would I want to spend several times more for a “subscription” which provides very little real value? Anti-subscription rhetoric might seem odd from a magazine publisher. But keep in mind that you are genuinely getting something new each month when you subscribe to a monthly magazine, unlike most software where regular updates are just fixing things that shouldn’t have been broken in the first place. Take CorelDraw as an example. While we use it and mostly like it, CorelDraw suffers from terrible performance at times (a problem for at least a decade), and it’s too crash-prone for my liking. Still, it’s pretty decent overall, and we want to continue using it. They bring out one new version a year, with perhaps a mid-year update, but they rarely add or improve anything that makes upgrading worthwhile. Still, when we were offered an ‘upgrade protection plan’ (UPP) for around $130 per user per year to stay on the latest version, we accepted it. We recently received notification that they were ending that plan, forcing anyone who wants to use the latest version onto a $50 per month subscription ($600 per year). That’s nearly five times what we were paying. While you can still buy the software outright, it’s $1100 per copy with no apparent upgrade discount, making that about nine times as expensive as the upgrade plan. Even when we were paying for separate upgrades, we were not paying $600 per year. It isn’t worthwhile, given the marginal improvements with each version, and the lack of significant performance improvements or bug fixes. Does Corel realise that many people like us already have Adobe Creative Suite (including Adobe Illustrator) that we could switch to essentially for free? We don’t want to do that, but it’s an attractive option compared to another expensive subscription. While I don’t like paying $70-odd per month for Creative Suite, it includes several very useful packages, including Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign, making it a far better value. Corel could have increased what they were charging us for the upgrade service, and we would probably have continued to pay it. But now we have cancelled all our UPPs and will stick with the 2022 version. They will get no more money from us; good job, Corel. It comes down to what users will tolerate. If most users say “no more” like we did and cancel, companies will get the message. But if enough users roll over and pay the exorbitant subscription fees, they’ll see that this scheme works and keep it up. This leaves the market open for a competitor to come along and offer a reasonable alternative without the subscription fee. Any such competitor would be guaranteed a portion of the market; those who don’t like subscription models. Also, the open-source (and free) software Inkscape is looking more attractive by the day... by Nicholas Vinen 24-26 Lilian Fowler Pl, Marrickville 2204 2 Silicon Chip Australia's electronics magazine siliconchip.com.au