RE: [OT] Announcements (was RE: XMLLight - What do you think?)

[Elliotte Rusty Harold <elharo@metalab.unc.edu>]

At 9:12 AM -0500 8/3/01, Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:
>In the announcment or on the web page?  I prefer 
>the announcement to be light on details except those 
>that tell me why I should click on the link and 
>get the details.  

It should be in the announcement. I find that companies that push their free demo versions often hide their pricing on the web site to until you actually decide to purchase. In several cases (e.g. Antenna House, RenderX) the pricing isn't even on their web sites. 

Generally speaking these tactics are designed to suck in as many people as possible. It's the first hit is always free approach. Of course most of the evaluators will not buy the second hit, but in this case there's no cost to the vendor for the first hit. If they can waste the time of 1000 evaluators with the free demo in order to make one more sale, they're happy to do so. I find that requiring the price is one filter that helps weed out unscrupulous companies that pollute the commons for their own gain.
-- 

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