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From: aaron@jessica.stanford.edu (Aaron Wallace)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Subject: Re: Microsoft Upgrade Policy
Message-ID: <1991Feb15.211715.6236@portia.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 15 Feb 91 21:17:15 GMT
References: <1991Feb14.023744.14888@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> <294@cogsci.ucsd.EDU>
Sender: Aaron Wallace
Distribution: usa
Organization: Academic Information Resources
Lines: 34

In article <294@cogsci.ucsd.EDU> lopes@cogsci (alann lopes) writes:
>In article <1991Feb14.023744.14888@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> dmk8r@plaid.cs.Virginia.EDU (Darrell M. Kienzle) writes:
>
>Darrell, I absolutely agree with you. I have spent thousands of dollars on
>Microsoft products in the last few years, and now they want a loyal customer
>to pay as much for w4w and excel BUG FIX upgrades as the average Joe who
>owns a spread sheet and/or a word processor. 

Waitaminute.  The bug fixes for Excel (2.1c, d) were quite cheap if I remember;
maybe even free.  The "bug fix" for WfW was $7.50 (1.0->1.1).  These are 
certainly in line with the policies of WordPerfect or samna, for instance.
Excel 2.1d->3.0 is not a bug fix; this is a major upgrade.  If you don't think
it's worth $129, no one is forcing you to pay.

In my article that started all this, I quoted the word "upgrade" for a reason.
Microsoft's new pitch is not a true upgrade policy.  Going from Word 5.5 to
WfW is not a mere upgrade; it could probably be called a change of lifestyle!
Okay, so those with MS products may feel slighted by the fact that anyone can
"upgrade" for $129, but this was the upgrade price before this new "upgrade"
plan (at least).  For those who want to get a few real Windows applications,
this is a good plan.

>I called MS with this question,
>and all they could say was, "I'm sorry but this is the decision of our
>product marketing team, I can't do anything about it".  Well, I will do
>something about it. I will stop buying MS products until they develop a
>more equitable upgrade policy. I urge others with similar views to call
>Microsoft and let them known how you feel.

That's your choice, and if enough people do complain, they'll probably change
things.  Don't expect many complaints from those upgrading their antedeluvian
copies of WordStar or MultiMate, though...

Aaron Wallace