----- Original Message ----- From: "mike wilson"
Subject: Re: Photoshop CS Bargain Basement
Let's say you are a member of a large orchestra. You take years to learn your instrument and weeks to learn a particular piece, along with your colleagues. A huge investment of time and effort. It is recorded and released on CD. Why is it $6, not $600? The answer, of course, is the effect of scale. At a cheap price, you can sell more and make the same, or better, profit. I know there are other factors involved in the argument but, for me, software is _grotesquely_ overpriced. It would be really interesting to see if any company had the mettle to reduce their price by a couple of orders of magnitude to try to corner the market.
I did a seminar a few years back with a very good and successful photographer.
On pricing, he said that if you want to drop your price 10%, you will have to do 40% more work to make up for the price drop.
My Photoshop instructor mentioned one time that something like 90% of the installed Photoshop programs are pirated, with the other 10% being legitimate installs.
People will take things for free if they have the opportunity, no matter what the cost is. I see it every day, with people shoplifting cheap trinkets out of my store.
Pirating is what keeps the cost of software high. If those other 90% bought, everyone would pay significantly less. The cost of theft is built into the price, and the honest consumers pay for the crooks.
William (no stolen software on my machine) Robb
