Err...what's going on here then...

Are you sure? The company I work for purhcase a lot of their Adobe and Macrodmedia products online.

I think its just a case of rip of Britian as per usual. The problem is there isn't much alternatives, Photoshop is by far the best bitmap graphics program so UK businesses don't mind paying for it.

 

Having too, and not minding are rather different. If you need the best...

 

Last time I looked the downloadable option was only available in the US. In Europe you can buy online on their site, but they then send you the boxed version. If the downloadable version was available in Europe the price difference would be even more absurd and outrageous than it already is!

It's not rip-off Britain, it's "rip-off anywhere outside the US" in this case .

Michael.

 

Do they think every where's currency is the same as the dollar? I hate when you see it as $300 in the US and then £300 in the UK!! The pound is worth more idiots! sorry...

 

I reckon as punishment Tim Burnlers Lee should charge the American's to use to the world wide web

 

Nope, South Wales.

 

OK. I have two conflicting views on this one.

1. At Oracle (I work in the pricing team, to lay down credentials) we 'globalised' our pricing several years ago. You pay exactly the same wherever you are in the world. It's worked in our favour for the most part.

2. There are different tax structures, different costs of doing business, different land costs, rent costs, etc... across the globe. Hence a company like macromedia, who actually distribute via retail (Oracle does not), has geographically variable costs, which may mean that a globalised pricing strategy is untenable.

Excuse the management speak, I shall of course commit sepuku immediately.

 

I could accept price differences for buying the retail boxed software in a shop but having different regional prices for downloadable versions is completely unjustifiable.

For similar reasons I think it's unjustifiable that Apple charge $0.99c for an iTunes song in the US, €0.99c (about 20% more) in the Eurozone and £0.79p (about 20% more again, nearly 50% more than the US price) in the UK.

Michael.

 

But the problem is that you can't have one distribution chain undermining another. If there were too great a differential between the cost of downloading and the cost of retail, there would be another argument. And they would likely lose their distribution contracts.

Ultimately I guess what I am saying is that we should try to actually think about it, rather than just going with the knee jerk reaction. Not being able to see a reason is no the same as there not being one.

 

Woooow... My GF (and team, mostly her work though!) came 3rd place in the Data Modeling contest on the Oracle Academy thing. I think I come second to Oracle in her life haha! Still hasn't got the prize money yet but yeah.. if I told her I knew someone who worked in the American Oracle she would look like this Is it fun working there?

 

Heheheh, it's ok I guess. The boss got us a luxury suite for the baseball last week, so that was fun. Had the presence of mind to do it for a day game, during working hours too. It's the little things that make you appreciate your boss!

Do you think that if you told her I work about 10 yards away from Larry Ellison's office she'd wet herself?

 

Well I have to say that does sound pretty cool! Can't say I follow baseball (or football for that matter) but I bet its like music gigs... even if you don't particularly like the band it's still great to see them live because its such a brilliant atmosphere. Who was playing? I keep having thoughts of a Simpsons episode where Homer walks into Rupert Murdoch private suit running though my mind!

What's ya name by the way? You know so I can be all like 'yeah anyway babe, I was talking to my mate bob last night and it turns out..' :MILD:

Would she wet herself? You know I think its a distinct possibility, I'll make sure she is sitting down too! She almost did when we went past an Oracle building on the train, we were going for a short break to Wales. She wanted to get off and force them to take us round the place lol! What the hell is your 'Academy' doing to these kids?! ...then again if there was a PMC building or something I might have wanted to do the same.

 

I've just spent the weekend using OSX and XP. And neither are as good as they should be.
XP is actually better (IMHO) in quite a few UI areas than OSX. Both are fairly stable, but OSX wins hands down in the eye-candy stakes
In any case, XP emulation on Mac, and maybe vice-versa looks set to become very interesting from next year...
Must look into Open Office again, sounds like it has come a long way snce I last took a look!
I usually buy software online direct from the US. Saves lots of money (although Adobe product is hard to get this way now).

 

Nah XP is rubbish, here is a quick off the top of my head list of stupid things XP does...

who wants to be told they have unused icons on their desktop? I can see! And if I was blind I wouldn't care! Besides, windows probably put them there. I hate having all these bubbles of useless crap flashing at me. No I don't want a fooking tour! And don't ask me 100 times! I know I turned your firewall off, it wasn't an accident! So stop telling me gain and again! Whats with things like the personalized menus that hide stuff? Don't hide file extensions or system files. What is with the XP start menu?! It doesn?t have a clue what programs I will use and I can choose what I want on the menu myself. When you install it, if you say fresh install and you have another os on there already it just presumes you want it on another hard drive! It doesn't even ask which one! What arrogance. The network 'places' is crap. Why does it show me everything everywhere on the network at one go? File higher-archie was devised for a reason. I have 8 computers running sometimes I don't want to see every share on each one in one window. Not only that but it doesn't handle Domain log on's right.. even the Pro version. Why, when you tell it to end a program that is locking up does it take all year? Is it in control here or what? Don't ask it nicely just remove its memory stack and it goes right away. Why restart for every change? You should only really need to restart for changes in the kernel. Though this is better on XP than other MS OS's.

I think those are my main issues with it. There are more but these ones arise almost every time I use it. Who wants a telly tubby hill? 2000 was a lot better, but now I have to use XP because some software only works on it.

 

Most (if not all) the things you complain about can turned off or changed, and with little or no effort.
It isn't rubbish. It's perfectly acceptable for getting serious, paid work done, as well as surfing audio forums and buying records on ebay.
I'm not interested in getting into an argument over Mac vs PC anyway. If you prefer Mac, that's fine.
Computing is not a religion to me: all I want to do is get my work done and get the money in the bank.
I do this every day with XP and from time to time with OSX.

 

Mac zealots will always come out with some lame argument as to why XP isn't any good. I agree its not as good as it should be, but some of the arguments are pathetic.

 

Thats the thing though, simply getting the job done with no hassle is exactly what I find xp is no good at. How can I get a job done with all those things making it a pain every step of the way. A lot of them can be turned off if you know how and its not always obvious but why do they put them there in the first place? Who really wants parts of their menu hidden?

It crashes more and is slower than any of the previous operating systems. How is that improvement? 2000 is a great operating system I have to say, why didn't they just update that to work with the latest stuff, add a few of the features...

I am by no means a Mac zealot, I prefer a PC, but OSX is a good OS...and XP isnt. It has the potential to be but it needs fixing!

Besides the main things of not asking where I want to install it (if you do it a certain way), not handling Domain log ons right (thats a BIG issue!) and not handling user accounts properly. Its just XP trying to be 'helpful' that gets in my way! I don't want it to be helpful, I want it to do the job I give it.

Anyway that is enough of a rant, it has some major problems and is also a pain in the arse to use.

 

Tenson - you're clearly not using the same XP that I use every day on a variety of different computers. I had an "Apple moment" with XP just the other day when I wanted to transfer some photos from my mobile to my Dell laptop via infrared:

I just turned on IR on my phone, requested the file to be sent and then stuck it near the IR port of my laptop. XP recognized the phone type and auto-magically did everything, prompted me if I wanted to accept the file that my P800 was sending (Yes) and then saved it. I then tried it with my girlfriend's Nokia...same thing . There are countless ways these days in which XP "just works" the way only Apple's used to.

Based on what? I find XP to me orders of magnitude more stable than any other flavour of windows and it's certainly faster. Even an ancient 266Mhz MMX Sony Vaio laptop was faster with XP than with Win98!

I do love Macs and they are a joy to use but I think XP is pretty good aswell.

Michael.

 

And what, exactly, do you think XP is?

Open a command prompt and type "Ver"

You'll discover that XP is version 5.1 (full name should be Windows NT 5.1). Windows 2000 is NT 5.0, and, strangely, NT 4.0 is NT 4.0.

 

lol