The first page of the announcement only indicates that
our upgrade guidelines will be changing from Tuesday 1st April, 2008
Only if you click on "Visit our Frequently Asked Questions section", you'll find that
If you are on versions Trados v6.5 or previous or SDLX 2004 and previous, we recommend you upgrade to SDL Trados 2007 now in order to retain discounted upgrade pricing for the software. From the 1st of April 2008 onwards, there will no longer be upgrade eligibility from these versions.
Stopping eligibility entirely is, indeed, a change, but the way it is presented is misleading and borders on the outright dishonest.
So, many translators who were working happily with Trados 6.5, and had no intention to upgrade right now (but thought they might upgrade later, when they purchased a new computer with Windows Vista and Word 2007), will either have to upgrade immediately, or be compelled to pay full price later.
Of course, they might also decide to stay with the current version, and look for a competitive upgrade to some other tool later.
Way to go, SDL: instead of improving your buggy software to build up customer loyalty, compel the customer to upgrade RIGHT NOW, or lose that benefit forever.
Trados has always had upgrade problems. That's one of the beauties of WordFast -- buy it once and you are set for life. It's also pretty unlike to be eaten by the ever-growing CAT monster.
ReplyDeleteI have to say that if you are still using 6.5 then why should you get the upgrade price, you've had the chance to upgrade 3 times already with Trados 7, 2006 and 2007. If you're on 6.5 you're hardly on the current version - you don't see Microsoft offering upgrade pricing from Windows 98 to Vista do you? Granted they could have communicated it better though.
ReplyDeleteI'm not on 6.5, we have one 2007 "pro" licence, and a few 7.1 freelance ones.
ReplyDeleteThere is plenty of companies that still offer upgrade prices (at different levels of discount) for programs much older than 3 years.
As regards Microsoft, if you have Office 2000, or even 97 installed, you can install over as an upgrade (paid at upgrade price) the current version (at least, you could until Office 2003 - I've steered away from Office 2007, but I don't think things have changed).
Hi, I thought it would be worth posting a comment from an SDL slant so you can retain a balanced view.
ReplyDelete- It is not practical for SDL to maintain products doing back more than 3 years – most other software companies do not. Customer’s wishing to upgrade to Windows Vista for example can do so if their software is not older than 3 previous versions, so Windows 2000, this is the same for Microsoft Office
- the software is not buggy, it has been improved and all the service packs have been free
- to get a PSMA and hence have ongoing free upgrades it is a minimal fee
- SDL provide support through a knowledge base and also free support for installation of the product even for non supported people – very expensive for a user base of 150,000 and 30,000 new units a year
Well, SDLX is not what it used to be when they were desperately trying to get customers. Even when you have the Premium thing, they hardly have any experienced or knowledgeable guy to fix your problem.
ReplyDeleteCan anyone tell me more about metatexis? I work with translating companies which require Trados. Is it really totally compatible?
ReplyDelete