You know, the thing is, I looked through my drive tonight at downloadable software I've bought over the years..
Some big (like Macromedia Dreamweaver; NetObjects Fusion; etc.) some small (Ad-Aware SE Pro) some in between (Clark Connect Firewall/Gateway). The reality is, in the end, I like buying downloadable software because it means that I can organize it as I see fit into discs as I see fit. Right now, on my HDDs, I have slightly more then 8 GB of Shareware that I have yet to burn to disc. Everything from templates to 3DMark05, etc. And in the end, I am the one who makes the disc the way I look at it. I cannot think of the last time I went to a "store" and bought software out of a box.. it's both more expensive, and more troublesome. In 2 weeks, when Nero7 comes out, I'll pick it up, and download and burn it off and I'll have a nice label because Nero provides good labels to use. I see nothing wrong with using their nice JPEG to make my printable disc look nice. And it's easily worth the $25 you save to just buy online and download rather then getting a disc. Hell, most of my clients do this with even the larger software.. and more companies are catching on. Yesterday, I purchased Adobe Creative Suite 2 DVD Edition.. for download: http://store.adobe.com/store/products/master.jhtml?id=catCreativeSuite I'm really struggling with why I would run to a store and pickup a box. Maybe in some cases it's worth it, but for upgrades, even big upgrades, the ability to download and implement in a day is easy. As I've noted before, I build my own "Autorun" programs to list programs that are on the disc. I have no problem with that either. The last disc I 'burned' as a compilation had: Photoshop; O&O Defrag, Autopatcher, AudioDVDCreator; Norton; CyberLink PowerDVD Platinum, CloneCD, UltraISO, TrueImage, DriveImage, Ghost, AAWSE Pro, Surething, DiVX6. All legit and paid for. All nicely sorted into folders where my autorun program finds them and allows me to chose them from a menu. When I burn off software discs with things I've purchased online, I tend to like nice, pretty informative labels that can tell me everything that is on a disc. If I sat around and scribbled with a sharpie just the list above, my disc would look like crap and I wouldn't have any better idea of what is on it. Considering Photoshop ran me almost $400 to buy & download, I'd prefer a much nicer, prettier looking disc ;) The purpose of a nice print-to-dvd/cd label system has saved me tons of headache. And it is better then stick on labels. I am aware of people who use it to burn up fake/bogus labels for DVDs they copy.. that's a waste.. a movie is just a movie, one thing on the disc, a sharpie would handle that. I've had DVDs with tons of small shareware programs.. things like SWFConverter, CoffeeCup Suite, etc. where you've got a ton of 2MB/10MB programs all stored... then you really need a label to tell you exactly what is on a disc. I like knowing that a disc has Nero 6.6.16 vs. another disc that Nero 6.3.25, etc. Comes in handy. This year is the first year that I have not purchased a single piece of software without downloading it. Not one. Bought Taxcut online, paid for the updates online.. CloneCD? SureThing? Adobe, Macromedia, heck.. even Symantec and others are big on pushing downloads. And it's a great system. Combine that with labeling up BartPE discs and quarterly burns of real data (like PSTs, Quickbooks data, etc.) which I like to label as well.. the R200 is a great tool. I rarely openly sing the praises of something, but the R200 does a brilliant job. I had picked up a Lightscribe drive & discs with the hope of using that as well.. but it takes too long, and it's not as easy on the eye. I do use the lightscribe for some clients who need it in a more transportable format.. but the R200 is genious, and I'd recommend it to anyone (and have!) CW
