[plug] [link] a lawyer Switches

[Brad Campbell]

Peter J. Nicol wrote:
>>  Compare this with this quote :"Deliberately limiting how much of your
>>  processor you can use?  Bugger em!"
> 
> 
> whatever dood.  I stand by it.  IBM sell proprietary hardware with nasty little
> hooks, and treat their customer base as captives.  Surprise, surprise!  Some-one

Funny, I do exactly the same thing. I sell several products with varying 
ranges of features all based on the same hardware/software.
Perhaps when *YOU* outlay the $$$ to R&D a product and bring it to 
market you might understand the reasoning behind it.
I have one product that I sell against a competitors product. My widget 
sells for $1500 against their widget for $1550. I artificially limit my 
feature set to not much more than theirs so as not to take sales away 
from my fully featured product that sells for $3000. Same 
hardware/software, but I really NEED to sell the product for $3000 to 
recoup the development time/$$$ spent to bring it to market.
To sell the whole thing for $1500 would be commercial suicide for me.
If a customer buys the cheap version and in the future decides they 
really need the extra features, then for an upgrade fee of $1500 I can 
enhance the product to do what they need it to do. Thus I still recoup 
my development costs.

As far as I'm concerned, I win and they win. They buy my product because 
it's competitive with my featureless opponents product on price and 
features, but if they need to upgrade it they can with less outlay than 
purchasing a completely new product.

I fail to see the difference with IBM. You get what you pay for.
Someone has to pay for the R&D in product development.

-- 
Brad....
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