Earlier this month, Jeff Atwood dubbed December 1st, Support Your Favorite Small Software Vendor Day. If you haven’t already, read the post and the comments. You’ll find it is chock-full of free to low cost software endorsed by fellow developers which could most-likely use your support.
While reading the post, it struck me that one of my co-workers actually purchased WinZip 10. When I say purchased, I don’t mean he bought and downloaded the product online. No, he actually ponied up the dough for a tangible copy which was shipped to the office in a shiny case.
He kept the product sitting on the desk. It was a conversation piece. It was a trophy. It was an anomaly. It was amusing.
WinZip has removed the You’ve-Been-Using-Winzip-For-X-Days counter. I’m not sure when they did it, but it’s now a 45 day trail version. Back in the day, however, I witnessed counters get pretty high. If I recall, counters topped 1000 days and I truly believed everyone just used the evaluation version forever.
Today, I’m wishing I had a purchased copy in the shiny case. Don’t you think it might just be the greatest developer white elephant Christmas gift ever?
I couldn’t agree with you more. The best way to keep the high quality and low cost software out there is to part with a couple of pounds now and again to support the single developer and small companies.
[...] Developer White Elephant ChristmasI love this – there is something inherently funny about a real, physical, boxed copy of WinZip sitting on your desk. Don’t believe me? Read the post – to me, it’s Coupland-esque.[Tags: humour workblog ] [...]