Too many upgrades!

There are just too many new technologies! It seems that once I spend hundreds of dollars to upgrade one suite, another program has a new version! It’s like cockroaches! In the time it takes you to kill one, more are being born. Last year, I spent a couple hundred dollars to upgrade to Microsoft Office 2003, $100 to upgrade Hash Animation:Master to version 10, $100 to upgrade to MakeMusic’s Finale 2004, $500 went to Adobe for the standard Creative Suite, and many more hundreds purchased Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Acrobat 6 Pro, Microsoft FrontPage 2003. This year, the round-up contains Animation:Master 11, J.River MediaCenter 10, Microsoft Money 2004, Norton Antivirus 2004, TaxCut 2004, Trillian Pro, and I’m sure other programs will creep into my life that lock me into upgrades. Sometimes I feel like asking the companies to stop adding things to their software to mandate an upgrade. Thankfully, some companies take this into consideration and try their best to make the upgrade really worth the dollars. Hash and Cerulean Studios (makers of Trillian) really have this nailed. Hash’s version 11 of Animation:Master adds some totally cool features and technologies that I’d love to spent weeks using. And after using Trillian Basic .74, Trillian Pro 2.0 was certainly worth the $20. The Adobe Creative suite was pretty cool, but they really don’t come with that many new features. But the features make up for this in their shock and awe effect they give to every observing audience. I guess such is the life of a software company. Those programmers must not get to eat until they come up with some new idea to stick in the next version of the software. It seems several manufacturers even need a whole department to decide the name for the next version. “We can’t just call it Photoshop 8! We need something better!