RE: The case against M$ Word

["Combs, Richard" <richard -dot- combs -at- Polycom -dot- com>]

Gary Schnabl wrote: 
 
> Duh! Seek out a reputable eBay "merchant" and not a used-camel dealer.
> There are a number there on eBay who pick up and resell unregistered,
> legal copies of proprietary software.

Adobe's full retail price for FM 8 is $899. A quick Ebay search
(http://tinyurl.com/5fjbsf) revealed that the reputable merchants are
selling unused copies of FM 7.0 (3 versions old) for $575 - $750. That
doesn't strike me as particularly cheap. If you intend to upgrade from
that, it makes no sense at all. 

Oddly, somebody's selling _upgrades_ to FM 8 for $342.78, above Adobe's
list price of $299. 

To be fair, you can get a "used" copy of FM 5.5 for UNIX for $199. And
the minimum bid for FM 3 for the NeXT is just $7.99. :-)

Anyway, this discussion has been about making a case against MS Word to
one's superiors. So I assumed we were discussing corporate purchases for
technical writing staff, not personal purchases for home or free-lance
use. I doubt that too many corporations bigger than micro size would buy
their software from Ebay. 

Richard


Richard G. Combs
Senior Technical Writer
Polycom, Inc.
richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom
303-223-5111
------
rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom
303-777-0436
------






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