The "Show Xara your appreciation" thread

[haakoo]

Money makes the world go round,...............

Hans

[Grenou]

Ah karma, it seems we meet again.

Now that Adobe has changed the playing field for every graphics company out there, I figured other companies would use that to their advantage, instead of taking advantage of their customer base... Guess I was wrong (or just very naive).

Xara's upgrade policy is now only beneficial for customers who are ONE version behind.

If you are going to release a new version every year regardless of what's actually in the new upgrade, you should really allow users to skip a version without penalizing them with higher upgrade costs. But if so many people are willing to accept Adobe/Quark/Autodesk's bullshit, I guess this change for Magix/Xara doesn't seem like a big deal to most users.

I for one am not amused with this new development.

Nou nou, zo erg is het ook niet, Xara is niet duur en zeker niet vergeleken met Adobe :-)

The short translation in case you don't speak Dutch but only live there: Xara is not expensive, especially not compared to the unmentionable (in my book) Mudhut company who are just plain greedy and far too full of themselves.

I was introduced to XaraX by a friend, immediately bought it and have never regretted it for one second.
More power to Xara's elbows. They are a great gaggle of talented people, long may they reign.
Well done and thanks for years of fun :-)

Grenou

[gwpriester]

The mud hut people.

I should point out the original adobe also contained cow and horse excrement.

[Know1]

Ja ik spreek Nederlands.

Don't get me wrong, I've had years of fun with Xara as well, still do, and will continue to use Xara Designer for a long long time as far as I'm concerned. That will not change.

I've had years of fun with Photoshop as well, and still do (with CS 5.1). Doesn't mean I have to accept it when things get worse, or won't complain about it. Adobe has lost me as a customer, I don't care what features they add, their behavior is unacceptable. Once we agree to new terms/licenses/policies that are worse for us we are stuck with them, they are not going to get better because we have proven that we are ok with them and accept them.

Next year the list of older versions you can upgrade from might shorten, or we will accept that it is OK to have always-on-DRM installed, or being forced to use a dongle, or having some Cloud based features you have to pay for in order to use the software. Before you know it you find yourself rationalizing that a subscription model isn't such a bad deal after all. This is a bit of a stretch at the moment... but Xara has never as far as I know changed this policy until now. It takes just small steps at a time, this just feels like step 1 in Magix plan for Xara's future. "Let's see if we can get away with it and try some more next year."

Compared to what Mudhut is doing almost every software company out there is doing a good job. So Relatively this change in upgrade policy is not so bad if we compare it to them. However, this also works the other way around. Let's take Zbrush as an example, or the Topazlabs plugins, or FL Studio.

I see software companies advertising that with them you still get a perpetual license version, which is basically saying nothing has changed. What they don't advertise is that their policies ARE now worse than what they offered before. Adobe is letting everyone else out there know it is OK to squeeze more out of customers while giving them less in return. This is not giving me a reason to upgrade just for the sake of supporting Xara, it works both ways.

[Grenou]

Ah, goed zo :-)

To each his own, I upgrade every year. Why? I don't want Xara to go out of business.
Upgrading costs the same as a meal out.
I'll have a baguette with something scrummy on it instead and hope Xara will keep getting better and better..

:-)
Grenou

[tonylondon]

There's another way to think of it. If you upgrade each year that's equivalent to a rental of about £80 per annum (less than £7 per month) for keeping up to date. Compare that with Adobe's new rental arrangement. And if ever you stop paying you get to keep the program, whereas with Adobe you get nothing.

[Nostaw]

I upgrade every year without a blink just take my money. I'm sure I spent more money on coffee breaks over a year than one annual Xara update. I'm scared to do the math in case it's true. Long live denial.

[Big Frank]

the last few years i have sadly moaned more than in previous but i buy on release day without hesitation
and this is odd: i've no had too many scruples over the years about p2p downloading
but never have i even considered not buying my xara product
if you upgrade regularly xara is not expensive for what you get
it just that i feel im getting less of what i want
but the basic program is my indispensible everyday tool since 1999

[Rik]

Started with X1 as a trial and then purchased Xtreme3 and progressed through all the upgrades, and onto the Designer Pro versions.

It's the best and fastest vector programme.
Now. I've not done any scientific tests, but, if I use it and it works fast, then that's all the testing I need.
The tools are great to use and pretty easy to understand.

And may I say that I love using Designer Pro.

BUT...

I am more and more disappointed at Xara/Magix taking away more and more tools that I use more often, and putting these into flyouts.
Sure, by all means do that.
But, please give the user the option to have tools as single buttons.

Ai
Appreciation? No.
I'm getting more and more irritated.

[gingerbeardman]

I came on board with CorelXara and continued with Xara when they brought the app back into the fold. I currently use V7 and am unlikely to change just yet as the backwards steps in interface usability and jack if new features leave me cold.

My thoughts are that I suspect Magix are preparing to split Pro into Page Layout/Photo/Web and offer a suite of apps just like Adobe.