I figure I'm actually on the air contesting about 300 - 350 hours a year. At
300 hours, the $30 annual fee is about 10 cents an hour. That cost
corresponds to a previous post of about 10 cents a day to keep the software
up to date. A bargain at twice the price. The cost for my subscriptions to
QST, NCJ and CQ are comparable. My dollar outlays for equipment, repairs,
etc. greatly exceeds that amount. The $30 annual fee for WL is truly a
minuscule fraction of my ham radio related expenses.
Do you know what Symantec charges for its annual fee for Norton Anti-Virus?
About the same. And Symantec support sucks the worst of any tech support in
the world.
Not all my WL related requests and bug reports have been taken care of as
quickly as I would like, but most have eventually been addressed in update
releases. When I had a problem with CW speed jumping all over the place,
W5XD emailed me suggesting the problem might be with the outboard CW speed
pot that comes with the W5XD multikeyer. He was correct and disconnecting
that solved my problem. So support beyond peer support is provided. Overall,
I'm satisfied with the product. And it seems like the majority of the user
base is also. If you are not, you are free to vote with your dollars and use
an old version, freeware or shareware. So stop your whining.
The other side of the coin is - how many hours do you imagine are put into
this product annually? How many units are sold? This isn't exactly a Quicken
or Excel sized market. I'll guarantee you W5XD is NOT getting rich off of
this. This is a part time after your day job endeavor. I'm sure Ron
considers it a labor of love. I feel fortunate that he wrote it and does
issue update releases. There is no requirement he do so. And eventually a
big piece of the product will need to be rewritten for full Vista
compatibility. How much time do you think that will take? And it probably
will still cost $30 a year for that upgrade.
73, Ken, K6LA / VY2TT
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