In the case of the car, it was an on-lot availability thing. I knew it
was coming, but I couldn't get one when I needed one (was a "need to
purchase NOW, my old car is falling apart" kind of thing).

In the case of Adobe, they often don't announce things until a month
prior to their actual (not target) ship date. This has been their
model with FrameMaker for as long as I can remember them owning it.

I'd be miffed as well if I couldn't get a "recent buyer" upgrade price
for the TCS. FM8 didn't come out terribly long before the TCS, and we
knew (well, I knew) that something was brewing since Adobe didn't
release the FM FDK as they usually do when a new version FM ships.
They were holding their cards close for the RH integration in the
suite before folks like Quadralay and others could create a truly FM
8-compatible version of their competing products.

I'd say that this alone would be something to watch in the future. If
the FDK for the new version of FM is held up, my bet is on a pending
upgrade to either the TCS or to RH specifically. If this is important
to you, hold off on upgrading FM until you know what's what.

On Nov 12, 2007 9:12 PM, Gene Kim-Eng <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> If you start reading automobile magazines 6-12 months before you intend to 
> buy a car, you will usually know if another car is coming
> along to replace the current model well in advance, and often you'll see ads 
> that say "coming to your...dealer on Oct 1st."  In
> fact, your... dealer will be holding "end of year clearance" sales on the old 
> model long before the new one is set to arrive.
>
> Sales promotions are another thing.  It's entirely possible to miss a sale 
> (rebates, zero-percent financing, etc.) because you
> bought a few weeks too early.  But you usually get a sporting chance at 
> avoiding that by keeping an eye on the industry sales
> figures for the current month to help you guess whether the salespeople will 
> be more or less hungry next month.  Something you can't
> do for SW if sales figures are not publicly disclosed.
>
> If I paid $899 for one SW product and then discovered that if I'd waited a 
> month or two I could have had a V8, er more SW, for $99
> more, I'd be miffed.  One way to reduce the chances of it happening is to 
> never buy a new SW product terribly soon after it comes
> out.  With Adobe and MS products, I usually don't touch them until I see at 
> least the second service release come out.  After my
> experience with an ongoing bug in Acrobat 7, I decided to only buy new Adobe 
> SW during that period at the end of the product's
> lifecycle when they say "buy now and get a free upgrade to our upcoming new 
> version."

-- 
Bill Swallow
HATT List Owner
WWP-Users List Owner
Senior Member STC, TechValley Chapter
STC Single-Sourcing SIG Manager
http://techcommdood.blogspot.com

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