dca@toylnd.UUCP (David C. Albrecht) (08/15/87)
I have to hand it to AT&T whenever a way of make money the way normal people do presents itself they always seem to manage to ignore it. Why does it always have to be feast or famine? The upgrade from 3.0 to 3.5 was very generous a whole new set of manuals and binders for both the system software and the unix utilities for only a hundred dollars. It's unlikely AT&T made much of a profit on that deal. But, let's face it an upgrade from 3.5 to 3.51 would consist of some 30 disks in a paper bag (we already have the binders), the new man pages and 'what's new in 3.51' section. All these materials are already being produced for the 3.51 release they would just need to produce some extras. Package the whole mess and charge some $100-$150 for the result and they would probably sell a number of them. Probably even make money on the deal. Upgrades are pretty lucrative for some companies. Too bad AT&T doesn't see it that way. At some $600 for the software I think anyone with a half a brain can imagine how many people will upgrade (does the term 'a big goose egg' ring any bells?). I suppose I can always hope that the future will see a 4.0 release which they will market under more attractive conditions as they did the 3.0 to 3.5 upgrade but I'm not holding my breath. David Albrecht