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PsL Monthly 1995 March
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PSL Monthly Shareware CD-ROM (Public Software Library) (March 1995).iso
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psl_news.0
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Text File
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1995-02-06
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7KB
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157 lines
AFTER READING THIS FILE, CLICK THE "FILE" MENU (IN THE WINDOWS
PROGRAM) AND CLICK OFF "PSL-NEWS".
PSL-NEWS CONTENTS:
=================
* Education Section Postponed
* SIMM Saver - How to put 30-pin SIMMs in 72-pin sockets.
* SZV101F Erases Hard Disk - It got us. Don't let it get you!
* PsL-ONLINE Adds Expanded InterNET Services - Surf the Net
* Changes in Shareware - More "crippled" shareware coming?
Education Section Postponed
===========================
Although we had planned to put both Home and EDUCATION programs
on this CD-ROM, the total size of those files was over 600 megabytes,
which would have left no room for the new programs for the month, so
we were forced to delay the Education section until a later month.
If you are a new subscriber and do not want to wait a few more months
for the next CD with the Education section, you can get the 09/94 CD,
which was the last CD to include the Education section on it, for $5
plus shipping ($4).
SIMM Saver
==========
Quick Electronics (800-800-5500) offers a way to use your old 30-pin
1MB SIMMs in new 72-pin motherboards. For $49, you get an attachment
which lets you combine four 30-pin SIMMs into one 72-pin module.
Another gadget lets you plug four 30-pin SIMMs into a single 30-pin
SIMM socket to get more RAM into an old motherboard.
SZV101F Erases Hard Disk
========================
If you get programs from BBSs or the Internet, watch out for a file
by the name of SZV101F.ARJ. This program came to the PsL-Online BBS
via Planet Connect. During testing, it erased the hard disk of one
of our reviewers.
PsL-ONLINE Adds Expanded InterNET Services
==========================================
PsL-ONLINE sysop Baine Brimberry has added
expanded InterNET Services: FTP, Finger, Gopher,
Telnet, Whois, and WWW Text Access through Lynx in additional to
Global Internet E-Mail.
With the Planet Connect Satellite Link to PsL-ONLINE, members can
hook into all the FidoNET Conferences as well as USENET and InterNET
Global E-Mail. At present FidoNET Conferences now
total 530 and there are over 4700 USENET NewsGroups online. Baine
anticipates the normal 30 Megs of mail and the newest of shareware
releases on a daily basis. With over 70,000 files online PsL ONLINE
is a fantastic source of the latest shareware.
PsL-ONLINE board features a Q-MAIL QWK Packet Door, International
Global E-Mail in addition to the Internet services and lively local
conferences including the SHAREWARE AUTHORS conference (J 12) where
shareware authors may upload programs for inclusion in both the
PsL Monthly CD-ROMs and the PsL-ONLINE file base.
PsL ONLINE offers over 12 Gigs of files, including all the most recent
pd/shareware releases and the PsL CD-ROMs on-line.
Changes in Shareware
====================
The members of the Association of Shareware Professionals have always
maintained that shareware should be fully functional (with the possible
exception of minor, non-essential bonus features for paying) and not
time or usage limited.
Recently, many ASP members have begun to feel that this policy encourages
users to think of shareware as free software which does not have to be
paid for since the user already has the fully-functional software.
This appears to be even more true among customers who have purchased
shareware disks from racks in stores without ever having been exposed
to the shareware concept before. They have a difficult time grasping
the concept of having to pay for something which most of them thought
they were paying for when they bought the disk, despite the shareware
disclosures that are normally printed on the outside of the package.
(Who reads fine print when buying "cheap" software from a rack in a store?)
In the ASP annual meeting at the end of 1994, a motion was made to change
ASP's rules to allow, among other things, time/usage limiting of programs
to encourage payment after a reasonable evaluation period (30 days, for
example).
Although a majority of the members voted in favor of the measure, they
fell short of the 2/3rds majority needed to change a rule, probably because
the set of motions was too complex for the taste/understanding of many
members.
However, the voting majority complained that it is unfair for
the minority of the group to tell them how to run their business and the
ASP Board has responded by working on a new, hopefully simpler, set of rules
governing what types of "payment incentives" can be used in ASP shareware.
Meanwhile, more authors are talking about making use of existing rules
which allow non-essential features to be left out of a shareware version.
One idea is to leave the features IN so that users can try them during
a reasonable evaluation period (which would normally be some combination
of time passed and number of uses), and THEN take them out as a means
of encouraging payment.
Another idea is to increase the frequency of pop-up shareware payment
reminder screens after the evaluation period.
At PsL, we support these types of measures because they allow the user
to fully try out the software, unlike programs which we now mark in our
database as "demos" because they omit important features from the
programs completely.
If you pay for the shareware you use, but enough others who are using it
do not, the author may not be able to afford to continue to develop and
support the program as well as new programs, which is unfair to you and
the others who have paid.
However, some of the ASP members who voted against allowing any kind
of limiting is counter-productive and they say that they will not limit
their programs and that they expect this to give them a competitive
advantage over programmers who do use limiting.
Time will tell who is right, although obscuring the results is the fact
that some red-hot programs will do very well no matter what and some
programs will never do well no matter what.
While we think limiting can *increase* present payments by something like
10%-20%, we don't think that it will suddenly begin generating
payments for programs which get virtually none now.
For example,
we received a plain text editor this month which had the Save function
disabled in the "shareware" version. With about 5 billion text editors
available, writing another one which is no better than all the others
and expecting to get a lot of registrations from it is folly, and
thinking that crippling it will help is folly multiplied.
On a related note, IBM has announced that they have begun distributing
some of their programs like shareware. The customer pays a dealer a
small fee to get a non-fully-functional version of the program to try
and gets a fully functional version of the program by paying the full
license fee.