Future upgrades: How often and at what cost?
I switched from Adobe LR because I liked the workflow and quality of Capture One, but also because I grew to resent Adobe forcing customers to subscribe to their software instead of the original system whereby one simply bought the software outright. It feels like Capture One is, in effect, doing the same with expensive upgrades every year. In fact Capture One is now costing me even more than LR annually. And this Pre-Upgrade-for-a "discount" feels a bit like an Adobe-type hype, (or am I just being paranoid?) I guess I'm looking for the proverbial bottom line -- How often should we expect to have to upgrade and at what cost?
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On past performance, there has usually been an upgrade to a new version every year in November or December. There have also been updates within the new version at various times in the year, adding new features, which are not charged for if you have bought the current version - which is why we are now at version 21.4. (As well as that there have been various point updates for things like bug-fixes, new lenses supported and that kind of thing.)
That may or may not appeal to you, but it has been the regular pattern for some years now. (They have done the pre-upgrade for a discount before but a major difference on this occasion is that they have announced in advance several new features.)
Of course, you are free to stick with the current version and don't have to upgrade unless you want to.
Ian
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Cisco,
The concept of discounted version upgrades has been around for a long time and typically meant that a new version of whatever the software was, often released every 18 months to 2 years, would be about 50% of the "full" price. Sometimes 1/3 of the cost for new version per year.
As Apple and Microsoft moved towards market control and shorter new versions release schedules for operating systems, etc., the need to keep up with whatever they did become more significant for pplication developers.
When both of them settled on major Annual releases late in the year (i.e. around October) it sort of forced application developers into the same release pattern, slightly delayed to ensure that what Apple and MS released was somewhat close to the pre-release software they had made available to developers before release.
In the case of businesses like Capture One that also rely on code for things like GPUs, Printers and so on developed by third parties an immediate release of an application for a new OS version release is probably not a wise decision even if they believe it might be completely ready and error free.
As for the costs - rarely does one get an entirely free lunch that one wishes to eat regularly.
The difference between a Pereptual License and a Subscription is simply that one can choose not to upgrade and still continue to use the software. Provided the computer keeps running or can be serviced and you do not need any additional hardware or software or camera/lens support that requires new versions, you are free to run the older software for a long time if you have a perpetual license. That is not the case if you have a subscription.
Is the price acceptable?
Well, if one finds an alternative that works for you and costs less, then probably not so long as you have no regular need to reproduce images that have been mainly processed in the application you wish to abandon.
I always remind myself that an annual upgrade cost is about the equivalent of upgrading the computer with some additional memory or maybe a mid range SSD. Saving the cost for about 6 or 7 years might allow me to upgrade to a new computer and the new version of software to go with it. Save a little longer and I could have enough for a new mid range camera body and then save again to add some lenses to it. Perhaps a new memory card for the new spec camera would require another year?
About 20 to 25 years to get a new top specification widely used Pro level camera - if there will be any by then.
Sure, we all like a "deal". But sometimes this need seems to cloud the logic we like to think we use to make buying decisions. At other times we tend to think we "must have" something when we do not need it at all.
Strange creatures, humans.
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