On Mon, Mar 04, 2002, Shlomi Fish wrote about "Slightly OT: Corel Students' Policy": >... > someone else for getting it for the full price of 2000 NIS. Naturally, > since I am a student who lives in a rented apartment and have a negative > influx, I cannot afford to pay that much. (nor my father, because he would > need a very good reason to spend so much on it).
You're assuming that people who are not students DO have 2000 NIS to spend on a piece of software. Just like you say about your father, this is simply not the case for 99% of the population. NOBODY that I know will ever buy for 2000 NIS a piece of software unless their livelyhood depends on it (e.g., you're a graphic designer and use corel-draw for that - even then you'd probably prefer Adobe's Illustrator...). Instead, most people I know would simply copy the software illegally. I, however, prefer to use free software instead. xfig is pretty good (I've drawn many professional-looking illustrations with it), and other stuff like pic and dia also exist. > I found a site which sells such software for American students for $100 or > so. That is a reasonable price. But it's only for _American_. MS Israel > gives rebates for students for most of its central software like Office or > DevStudio. And Linux is practically free for anybody. So, why can't Corel > follow suit? I think Corel Israel knows that even $100 (550 shekels, including VAT!) is too high for most Israelis, and 95% of the people pirating 2000 shekel software will also pirate 500 shekel software. So they give up on selling to individuals and concentrate on selling to businesses. When you sell to business your only price limit is your competition: it's not like a business is going to stop drawing just because drawing programs are pretty expensive. > Part of the reason people switched from WordPerfect 5.1 to Word was that > Microsoft gave it at a discount to course houses, teachers, etc. And I > still find WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS superior to Word XP, which is the I know someone from the US who did the opposite, bought WordPerfect instead of Word because it was cheaper. How many Israelis do you actually know that would do that? When you can copy (illegally) both of them for free, the individuals (not organization) don't really care about how much the software cost, to students, teachers, or anything. > If Corel does not enforce a global student/courses policy no wonder it's > still behind Microsoft. Instead of looking for places where Microsoft > abuses its power - maybe we should look for places where its competitors > are not acting just as wisely. The same student who can't afford a 2000 shekel software probably also can't afford to buy a computer, and uses the school's computer labs. What software you find there depends more on the prices of site licences for universities, rather than on prices to individual students. Does Corel have special prices for universities? -- Nadav Har'El | Monday, Mar 4 2002, 20 Adar 5762 [EMAIL PROTECTED] |----------------------------------------- Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |Martin Luther King said "I have a dream", http://nadav.harel.org.il |not "I have a plan". ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
