What is Digg?45 Comments
- senorprogrammer, on 10/11/2007, -2/+17Agreed. And I have no problem with upgrade pricing in the future. After the one year is up then by all means. But a promise is a promise especially as part of a sale against software that is clearly not ready for primetime at the time and still growing. Mac users are known forn eagerly supporting fledgling software - it is not unreasonable to expect the makers of that software to do so in kind.
- fohat, on 10/11/2007, -6/+17What is it with the whiners these days? All the blogger person had to do was contact the manufacturer and they would have gotten an answer. This attention whoring is so lame. OMG They Are Ripping Ppl Off! Uhm, no they aren't.
Take a freaking chill pill. - senorprogrammer, on 10/11/2007, -1/+10@Sam, if you'd read my original post before commenting you'd see that we did contact tech support the moment Parallels no longer worked. The email you received appears to be a form letter that is now being sent out. It is clearly different than the one we received and yours is probably a result of the flood of questions they've been getting about the upgrade path.
Ben from Parallels has commented the following on my original post: "If you bought upgrade protection you WILL get a free 3.0 key! Its just taking us a day or two to get them out. Hold tight, its coming!"
I take this to mean that Parallels will be honouring their original promise to all of those with 1-yr upgrades paths. - chrisutley, on 10/11/2007, -4/+13I agree 100% ... I wrote them yesterday to express the same opinion. I don't have a problem with the price for a new user, but $40 for the upgrade is off the mark. If they keep this up, VM Ware may get back in the game.
- pauldy, on 10/11/2007, -1/+8I was wondering this myself last night and I almost actually paid for the upgrade but something felt sour and I stopped myself vowing to look this over tonight. I'm glad I stopped myself now, has anyone posted this in the parallels forums?
- filmbandit, on 10/11/2007, -2/+8buried for wasting my time -- it looks as though parallels is resolving this matter.
- samadam, on 10/11/2007, -7/+12Please people. I contacted their support, and they sent me:
Hello,
Thank you for contacting Parallels support.
We apologize for the inconvenience caused. Due to the great interest
stimulated among our customers by the new release, we have experienced
some technical problems with the servers. We are doing our best to
resolve these problems as soon as possible and you should receive the
email shortly. Please contact us again by replying to this email if you
do not receive this email in a few days. In case using Parallels Desktop
during next few days is essential and crucial for you please register at
our website and get a temporary trial key for version 3.0.
Also please make sure that the purchase email has not been stopped by
your email spam filter.
Best regards, Scott Rogers. - meatmcguffin, on 10/11/2007, -4/+8"This copy includes free Upgrade Protection for one year following the date of purchase, which entitles you to receive all major upgrades released during that timeframe at no additional cost. "
Miss that part, eh? - stalefries, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4VMware has DirectX 8.1 support in Windows XP, FYI.
- chrisutley, on 10/11/2007, -3/+6"Please people. I contacted their support, and they sent me:"
What has that got to do with them gouging us for an upgrade? - Bamborzled, on 10/11/2007, -2/+5"You know what's a good idea? Pirate this software."
That's NOT a good idea.
Parallels does its job and does it very well. It has introduced features no other VM had like coherence mode and near full-speed OpenGL/some DirectX. And they've promised both those things in the past. Why pirate something you support? - inactive, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4Amen brother. I remember when VM products from other vendors - e.g. Symantec - were costing hundreds of dollars and those products emulated the CPU and didn't have even 2D graphics acceleration, just framebuffer scrapers. And as you say, you can spend $29.95 for a dashboard widget that changes your desktop background. So a mere $49 for an entire VM solution with snapshots, Bootcamp support, native tools, 2D acceleration, and burgeoning 3D acceleration, is simply a bargain. I can't believe Parallels is that cheap; if Parallels didn't exist then I'd probably be paying $100s for VMware Fusion, instead of using the "free" beta they're dumping to try and keep people away from Parallels.
Anybody who thinks $49 is too much for a product as good as Parallels is living in a fantasy land. - bugfaceuk, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3Exactly. There's nothing wrong with VMWare charging what they want for what they've developed. Parallels has ensured that they will have to work hard for our dollar.
Good luck to both products, these are interesting times: Apple keeping Microsoft working harder on Windows, Microsoft will get a Zune right and get Apple working harder on iPod, AMD hopefully able to keep Intel inovating, and Parallels pushing VMWare. This is capitalism at its best. - senorprogrammer, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3No, that's a terrible idea. Exerting the pressure of the marketplace is a good idea. People speak, Parallels listens. People steal, Parallels goes out of business. I'd much rather them do good, make a great product and stick around a long time.
- miniboss, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3Some people are missing the point. We don't regret investing in this brilliant software, but if you make a promise to the customer then live up to it or expect the consumer to look elsewhere for a solution. I understand hard work should be paid for, but you can't under-estimate the importance of customer satisfaction to keep a business going.
- bugfaceuk, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3I'm sorry, I signed up for Parallels when they first started selling it, and I paid _happily_ for the upgrade. Total spend so far is around $62. For what it is, it's more than worth it. There are enough single purpose shareware tools out there for $29, I could buy two of those and still only get a FRACTION of the value I get from Parallels.
As far as I am concerned those posting and complaining have insufficient respect for the engineers developing this fantastic product. That is without taking into account the collatoral benefits of having two VM companies fighting for your dollar.
This feels yet more unjustified given that you can carry on using your current version if you do not want to pay for the new features. After all, if the new features are not worth anything to you (clearly not, you don't want to pay for them), you don't need the upgrade. - ceribik, on 11/17/2007, -0/+2They are two different things... hardware vs software.
- pauldy, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2I'm kind of miffed that I laid out 80 bucks in April only to find out that the product I paid for is obsolete in June and they want another 50 bucks in order for me to continue receiving updates and bug fixes. I was ok with laying out the 80 dollars but 130 for what given the pattern should be 6 months of usage is absolute crap. The product has been available for 15 months and has been through 3 major revisions with bug fixes to previous versions being absent. In order to get bug fixes past each major release your stuck upgrading to the newest version and paying the extra 50 bucks(ok 40 if you prepay). Somehow the customers who aren't happy with this are just whiners? If they feel their product is worth 200 bucks a year to use then they should just charge that and be done with it. If I had known what I was getting into I would have just stuck with boot camp instead of taking a chance on this company and purchasing their product. If you can't see the legitimate gripe in this you are being dishonest with yourself or are so detached from the situation in general you have no business commenting on it to begin with.
- burlives, on 10/11/2007, -2/+4On the official blog there was a post stating that those who bought the one year free upgrade package would in fact be getting a free upgrade. This was about a week and a half prior to the release. For some reason I am still seeing complaints from people saying they got screwed. Please do some research before posting.
- muller, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2I completely disagree with your statement for one very important reason: at the time of their original purpose, it was spelled out that they would receive all upgrades free for an entire year. It is irrelevant how much work goes into the product, or how amazing it is - if they wanted to charge all customers for the upgrade, they shouldn't have promised that they wouldn't.
- bugfaceuk, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2So Unity looks superb, even better than Coherence mode. However, do we know the pricing on Fusion yet? It's probably a little early to be deciding which one is best when we don't know the pricing.
- ratzfatz, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Parallels has developed their software upon to a complexity level that I feel pretty close to that of Windows. They came up with a great product one year ago making Win XP Pro fly and starting up within seconds. Booting time has tripled since (on the same hardware).
Parallels also adds virtual interfaces to my network setup, requires a lot of attention whilst dealing with a number of virtual machines and seems to focus itself strongly on animations and transition effects which wear off after watching a couple of times.
On the opposite, VMware is a great new experience.
It is not the logo alone in the dock, which shows more eloquence. F2 brings up a BIOS at start up - a great feature. I also can assign both cores to the machine - Parallels is missing both options. VMware seems to be the better product - no matter what it costs. Fast, efficient, straight forward.
There are many cars around with bells and whistles. They all deliver from point A to point B. As being German, I like to stay with Porsche. Parallels came across too much like Lexus lately - I regret to follow their further invitations for a ride. I head for the "right" stuff. Even when it's bumpy here and there. - zagom, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3I'm glad I waited. I called parallels TWICE and both times I explained I had bought a key last December with free upgrade protection and that it stresses I would be entitled to a new key because it still falls in line with a "major" upgrade. Both times the sales person from SWSoft said sorry this is a brand new 3.0 release which is not included in the upgrade protection plan...
With Parallels saying they'll give us our keys now, it appears to me that they got burned by the actual wording of their upgrade plan and did not intend or anticipate people would demand 3.0 as a free upgrade.
All said. Parallels is a great product, and the Vmware competition is making virtualization on the Mac jumping by leaps and bounds. - cvk_b, on 10/11/2007, -3/+4That sucks. Best of luck to all of you in that boat.
- siggyfawn, on 10/11/2007, -2/+3Charging? For a product?
Other then being the foundation of our society, I find it reprehensible!
(waits for the "bring them down" link with 12 frames of their front page auto refreshing) - pauldy, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Its more principle for me than the money. They release so many major upgrades in a year, don't bug fix previous versions, and they have policies and practices that are more in line with a credit card company that a software development firm. Then top it off with them not honoring peoples requests for serial numbers who spent money on upgrade protection and you have a lot of poed people looking for answers from a company that doesn't know how to deal with it.
I dealt with it by hitting vmwares site signing up for the beta, boxing my parallels software up and calling visa. If taking money back out of their pockets doesn't send the message that they need to come at their customers a little differently then they will quickly become the name that was and I will probably end up using VirtualBox because I won't be willing to pay VMWare the 4x bucks they want for vmware fusion because of the lack of competition. - pauldy, on 10/11/2007, -3/+4I just found out that I bought mine in April so I don't even qualify for near new release upgrade. I guess they burned me pretty good, thats why mastercard and visa gave us 90 days to institute chargebacks. Now I'll be using VirtualBox until VMWare has hardware acceleration then I'll be buying their solution. One can only hope we aren't in the minority on this and everyone else is willing to support the VMWare solution like we did Parallels. At least there is a chance the VMWare guys won't screw us over like the Parallels team already has.
- mpeters13, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2Forget parallels. I'm on the vmware fusion boat now.
http://www.vmware.com/products/beta/fusion - Escamillo, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1@deoFusion
So hardware is worth paying hundreds of dollars for but software isn't worth paying even $40 for?
I value my "software" much more than my hardware. If someone broke into my home and made off with my DVD player, CD player, record player, or video game console, I couldn't care less. But if they made off with my DVD collection, CD collection, vinyl record collection, or video game collection, then I'd be quite pissed. Software is more valuable than hardware in almost all aspects. RMS has convinced you that software has no intrinsic value, but he's wrong. - chrisutley, on 10/11/2007, -2/+2About 15-years from now, Internet message board debate techniques will be all people know. The Presidential debates will be a real laugh riot, when they constantly use sarcasm and profanity laden personal insults to make every point. Kudos to the Digg generation, kudos. Good luck, you're gonna need it.
- ChrisFromLeics, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0I don't mind paying for major updates but I'm waiting to see what level of virtualisation is built into Leopard.
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -3/+3
OMFG get a life. Are so so used to pirating software or having mommie and daddy pay for it that you are complaining about $40?
Perhaps cars, air flights and your personal labor should be free, too? After all, those programs wrote themselves and none of the programmers have to eat...
It pisses me off when people do good work and ask for a more-than-reasonable compensation and then some cheapass ***** whines about it.
As a parallels user of v2 that has constantly been downloading all the build I clearly expected an upgrade charge for 3.0; its a real step above.
I just feel you're being petty by claiming that the "major updates" phrase means you get 3.0 for free - and it burns me up even more that the upgrade cost is only $40 and yet you still complain.
They are a great company that has had success beyond their dreams and no longer are children; let them grow up and be a real company.
and Please, please throw all your Macs away and go back to PCs only; you should have stopped using macs at OS 7.6.1 - pixeldust, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1Me as well, I recomend anyone thinking parallels to check out the new Fusion beta. I've tried both and i'm glad I didn't pay for parallels.
- meatmcguffin, on 10/11/2007, -2/+2I owe you an apology then but i can understand why people can be impatient when someone has broken a promise to them.
Still, it raises the question that if Parallels knew so many people would upgrade, why didn't they pre-emptivly mail new trial keys to all the current purchasers of V2 ? - Escamillo, on 10/11/2007, -2/+2Let me get this straight:
Mac fanboys, who think nothing of covering Apple's huge profit margin for Macs, think nothing of spending hundreds of dollars for a new iPod each and every year just because Apple comes out with a new color, and can't wait to spend $600 at the end of this month on a frikkin' phone simply because it carries the Apple brand, are bitching about paying $40 for Parallels?
If it were Apple that were putting out Parallels, they could charge $100 and you guys stampede Apple's stores and slap your credit cards on the counter so fast as to make Apple's sales clerk's heads spin, but let someone other than Apple dare charge $40 for their product, and you guys bitch and moan. Very amusing. :p - drmessano, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1This is lame.. they're promising a free upgrade TO THOSE THAT ARE ELIGIBLE, and THEY HAPPEN TO BE RUNNING BEHIND.
So-the-*****-what? - Topher06, on 10/11/2007, -2/+1F*ck, I am tired of people expecting everything for free. If you can't afford it, your not entitled to use it because you complain about its cost. When did America become a socialist country, expecting equal access for all. If you don't want to pay for it, move on.
- dmcbride6, on 10/11/2007, -2/+1whoever is digging this is a ***** tard. Give SWsoft a break. they have to stay in business some how and its not exactly like they are asking alot.
I paid for v2 and I paid for v3 - neither of which I had any issues paying for especially after seeing the increase in productivity I got being able to run the one windows program flawlessly within osx
buried for lame. - inactive, on 10/11/2007, -1/+0@pauldy "If you can't see the legitimate gripe in this you are being dishonest with yourself or are so detached from the situation in general you have no business commenting on it to begin with."
Hey, or the third option that there is NO legitimate gripe. But why should you bother thinking about other options when you can just claim that anybody that disagrees with you is either ignorant or dishonest. - inactive, on 10/11/2007, -7/+3@meatmcguffin "Miss that part, eh?"
No, I didn't ***** miss that part. Those particular trolls are having their own annoying whine sessions because Parallels told them it'd be a week before those Upgrade Protection Plan licenses are mailed out, and they're hopping up and down like spoilt brats because it's been 3 days so far.
The trolls I'm referring to are whining because they didn't buy the Upgrade Protection Plan - which was an additional cost - and are now demanding that they get the free upgrade to 3.0 anyway.
***** whiners everywhere. I swear Parallels should have charged more per copy and attracted only a better class of customer. It can't be worth their time to have all these cheapskate losers who think $10 is somehow the difference between life and death. - Godlike, on 10/11/2007, -6/+2Nice to see all the people constantly bitching about microsoft having to deal with the ***** that corporations pull.
You are not immune. - fkr3, on 10/11/2007, -9/+4Dear SWSoft,
We can't stop talking about how great your product is. But it turns out you want money for it? What the ***** kind of fantasyland do you live in and where do you get off thinking your time is worth our money?
Love,
Your admiring fans who place no fiscal value on your work.
PS.
Keep up the great work. - ktelfer, on 10/11/2007, -7/+2You know what's a good idea? Pirate this software. You can probably torrent it from Demonoid anyways. I myself use BootCamp, which Apple will let you download for free. I hate Windows, and only use it for playing the odd game. Parallels won't do this well, because of the shared resources. But if something like this is happening to those who do use it, then cast down your defiance by getting it for free :) Why pay for software that is grossly overpriced, especially when dealing with a company who does not keep its promises.
- CBTF, on 10/11/2007, -9/+4Mac users complaining about pricing = ROFL.
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -11/+5Oh for *****'s sake. These trolls have been crapflooding the Parallels support forums for days, whining about how they only got free upgrades to 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4 and 2.5, and now they have to pay to get the next major release of 3.0. Now they're crapflooding Digg with the same BS.
Are these numbnuts so stupid that they thought "free upgrades" included major releases? I reckon they're the same sort of people calling up Microsoft, complaining that they deserve a free copy of Vista because they bought Windows XP back in 2002. And how ***** pov are these people that $49 is worth all of this bitching and moaning? There have been other similar trolls posting these epic whine sessions because they missed the $39 "get in quick" offer; days of bitching and moaning over ten ***** dollars.
Get a freaking life, you damn trolls. And stop crapflooding every blog on the planet.
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