Z4648252@SFAUSTIN.BITNET (Z4648252) (10/10/89)
Chris Hinton writes:
" Hello you netters, I need some help. I need a good PD Word Processor. I
have (gak!) 1st Word, but I hate it with a passion. I also think spending
$100+ for any program is just plain stupid. Any suggestions?"
Have you tried ST Writer? It is not a WYSIWYG type word processor
but is fast, well-supported, and is constantly updated. It can be
found in STart magazine (I think).
"$100+ for any program is just plain stupid."
Why? Some of the better business programs may take a team
of several professional programmers and many months of hard work.
Where does the money come from for their salary and research costs?
I don't like the costs either but we have to be realistic. If
one uses a piece of software on a regular basis, then, philosophically,
it is as if it was a piece of equipment such as a printer or disk
drive.
STers still, in spite of the moaning over piracy, feel that
software should be "cheap". Sorry for the slight flame but I fear for
the ST's software development and research. Just my overly biased
opinion....
Larry Rymal: |East Texas Atari 68NNNers| <Z4648252@SFAUSTIN.BITNET>harrison@utfyzx.uucp (David Harrison) (10/16/89)
In article <891010.08342625.067245@SFA.CP6> Z4648252@SFAUSTIN.BITNET (Z4648252) writes: >Chris Hinton writes: >> "$100+ for any program is just plain stupid." >Why? Some of the better business programs may take a team >of several professional programmers and many months of hard work. >Where does the money come from for their salary and research costs? I have read that Lotus needed over 100 person-YEARS to port 1-2-3 from DOS to the Macintosh. I don't promise the reliability of the number, but it doesn't seem horribly off the mark to me; good software really is that hard to write. What it implies is: - It cost 100 person-years x $40k / person-year = 4 million bucks to do the port. ($40k / person-year is probably low: standard accounting practice is to double a salary to find the cost of an employee.) - Assuming Lotus gets 50% of the retail price, they would have to sell 80,000 copies at $100 at pop just to get their R&D costs back. They still haven't paid for media, documentation, technical support, the cost of writing the original 1-2-3, nor have they made a dime. Of course, if the product flops in the marketplace they are out the 4 million bucks. Generalising these numbers, we might conclude that it is people who think good software should cost less the $100 that are "just plain ..." -- David Harrison | "God does not play dice with Dept. of Physics, Univ of Toronto | the universe." -- Einstein UUCP: uunet!attcan!utgpu!utfyzx!harrison | "Quit telling God what to BITNET: HARRISON@UTORPHYS | do." -- Niels Bohr
alan@km4ba.UUCP (Alan Barrow) (10/20/89)
In article <1989Oct16.133930.21837@utfyzx.uucp> harrison@utfyzx.UUCP (David Harrison) writes: > >Generalising these numbers, we might conclude that it is people who >think good software should cost less the $100 that are "just plain ..." >-- Actually, I conclude that the problem lies with the way Lotus wrote their software..... They welded the sw to the HW platform, which not only made ports difficult, but helped make "compatibility" into the curse of the PC-DOS world. ( 100 man-years to port is the price you pay for squeezing that extra bit of performance out of IBM's sluggard son) Even Lotus's current products show the old school attitude when compared to Excel & others.. ( I canned Lotus at 2.0? ) Excel is virtually device independant compared to lotus. I have no sympathy for applications that insist on reinventing the user interface. It will prob be running on 4 or more O/S ( Including unix ) while lotus is still working on the latest rev. for dos. Not that Excel is the perfect sw package (Just better than most :->), but in most cases, the more rules (O/S, bios, etc) you break, the more trouble you will have porting.... (every programmer knows this, we just do it anyway!) So.... I *do* believe that good sw can be cheap & portable! (and *no*, I do not work for a SW company :-> ) >David Harrison | "God does not play dice with >Dept. of Physics, Univ of Toronto | the universe." -- Einstein >UUCP: uunet!attcan!utgpu!utfyzx!harrison | "Quit telling God what to >BITNET: HARRISON@UTORPHYS | do." -- Niels Bohr Alan Barrow "I am not a computer person...... ..!gatech!kd4nc!km4ba!alan but I play one on TV......"