I would probably get a lot of selling people on my back for saying this, but still: selling a product isn't everything (and often is the easy part).
I think that people will pay for a software product even if there are free solutions out there when they don't want to worry about "who's going to help me if something goes wrong with the product or if i need some help/improvements?". The simple fact that two software applications do the same thing (more or less) will not be a 100% decision maker for a real business.
Our company develops custom software for different industries. One of our customers bought a software solution from us a couple of years ago, when we didn't have a support department. A couple of months ago we were in the process of signing a contract with a different customer, for the same product (different, improved version - this is not important). One of the managers was an "ex-old customer manager" who knew that the product was good, but hi knew they didn't have any support at that time from our part. So, the fact that at this moment we do have a support department (and we could offer them a support contract), gave us the opportunity to sign the deal with the new customer.
There has been a discussion a couple of weeks ago here on/. about Google apps and commercial ones. I think that we you (as a business) want to include a software solution as part of a business process, you really want to think more about what improvements you can achieve with the product, what kind of support you get, what's the life cycle of the product (do you get new versions, improvements, etc.) instead of just thinking about the money spent (if any) on product acquisition.
I mean, if they misconfigured windows, so it stopped booting then they need a new harddrive with a new install.
Just because your operating system (windows, Linux, UNIX, dos 6.22, etc.) stops booting, it doesn't mean that the harddrive must be replaced. I simple OS reinstallation could solve the problem. I understand that we all live in a consumer society, but there are a lot more useful places where that money can be spent.
Off-topic: They destroy (dismantle) cars involved in minor accidents (where a door or a bumper must be changed) in Japan. And they make the owner to pay for that! In my country that car could still be used for a long time.
Slashdot Mirror
ACT I: jIH ta'be' chenmoH muSHa' tlhej vetlh be'
From Google Translate: "I didn't make love with that woman"
This confirms the fact that strcpy and memcpy are still used in all those libraries.
I think that people will pay for a software product even if there are free solutions out there when they don't want to worry about "who's going to help me if something goes wrong with the product or if i need some help/improvements?". The simple fact that two software applications do the same thing (more or less) will not be a 100% decision maker for a real business.
Our company develops custom software for different industries. One of our customers bought a software solution from us a couple of years ago, when we didn't have a support department. A couple of months ago we were in the process of signing a contract with a different customer, for the same product (different, improved version - this is not important). One of the managers was an "ex-old customer manager" who knew that the product was good, but hi knew they didn't have any support at that time from our part. So, the fact that at this moment we do have a support department (and we could offer them a support contract), gave us the opportunity to sign the deal with the new customer.
There has been a discussion a couple of weeks ago here on /. about Google apps and commercial ones. I think that we you (as a business) want to include a software solution as part of a business process, you really want to think more about what improvements you can achieve with the product, what kind of support you get, what's the life cycle of the product (do you get new versions, improvements, etc.) instead of just thinking about the money spent (if any) on product acquisition.
I understand that we all live in a consumer society, but there are a lot more useful places where that money can be spent.
Off-topic: They destroy (dismantle) cars involved in minor accidents (where a door or a bumper must be changed) in Japan. And they make the owner to pay for that! In my country that car could still be used for a long time.
Is there a search engine available at MSN or Yahoo?!?!
Now we know why Enterprise was so big...The had hard disks all over the place! ;)
LOL
I couldn't agree more!