[filmscanners] RE: Note to pre-1999 VueSmart purchasers of VueScan

["Laurie Solomon" <laurie@advancenet.net>]

>then there might be cause for people who bought ViewSmart to be upset.

Of course, people will always find a cause to justify their becoming upset
about almost anything - especially when they may have had exaggerated
expectations in the first place.  I am upset about software and hardware
that I purchased a few years ago no longer working with the current OS's and
hardware which is not longer backward compatible rendering what I spent good
money on totally orphaned and obsolete - especially when some of that stuff
was sold only a few months before the new stuff rendering it obsolete were
introduced into the market and the makers and sellers of the old stuff knew
about the situtation in advance.

Would there also be a cause for being upset if Ed stopped making the
software altogether and sold the names only to a different software
publisher who made new and different scanning software with the newly
acquired name; would the original owners of Ed's software be entitled to
free upgrades of the new software that uses the old name?  As the old saying
goes, the devil may be in the details.  From a business point of view, I
would think it would be ethically and politically correct to offer those
owners of the original ViewSmart a special upgrade discount on the new
version of VueScan; but at $40, it may not be practical or worth it to
anyone since a 50% discount would only amount to $20.  I wonder what the
furor would be if Ed announced that he would no longer be offerring as part
of his license free upgrades with the purchase of any new versions from this
point on and no other software which did the same thing or had the same
features were to become available at a similar price.

-----Original Message-----
From: filmscanners_owner@halftone.co.uk
[mailto:filmscanners_owner@halftone.co.uk]On Behalf Of Austin Franklin
Sent: Thursday, October 10, 2002 5:27 PM
To: laurie@advancenet.net
Subject: [filmscanners] RE: Note to pre-1999 VueSmart purchasers of
VueScan



> >... is ViewScan a "follow on" product to "Photosmart", in that
> >it basically was the same product, just a newer version...
>
> (As in earlier note, I meant VueSmart instead of Photosmart.)
>
> I found a more definitive answer to this question in a post from
> Ed Hamrick to the comp.periphs.scanners and rec.photo.digital
> newsgroups, 14 March 1999:
>
>   I changed the name of VueSmart to VueScan.  To paraphrase the
>   song - "It's my program, and I'll rename it if I want to." <smile>
>
>   I renamed it when I decided to support multiple scanner types.
>   Just think of VueScan 1.1 as VueSmart 8.1.

Certainly he has every right to re-name it, but it's the disposition of the
upgrades that would be a concern.  If he sold ViewSmart with an "unlimited
free upgrade" and then simply changed the name (though continued to develop
it), and now is not honoring the "unlimited free upgrades" that people who
purchased ViewSmart were told they would get (and I'm not saying this is the
case, as I don't know), then there might be cause for people who bought
ViewSmart to be upset.  Right?

Regards,

Austin

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------
Unsubscribe by mail to listserver@halftone.co.uk, with 'unsubscribe
filmscanners'
or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title
or body

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unsubscribe by mail to listserver@halftone.co.uk, with 'unsubscribe 
filmscanners'
or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or 
body