Thing
Things, times and people: they ALL change.
You mean like AutoCad? A CAD workstation (meaning at the time an IBM AT 286 computer) cost something like 35 000 ⏠in 1986 with AutoCad. Today I can put a decent workstation together at 10% of the price. I am not a fan of subscription software either, but many companies regard it a better way accounting-wise than software as investment.
AutoCAD has always been high priced but recently a Maker became CEO. Heâs changed things and made more reasonable alternatives for Makers. Unfortunately, AutoCAD is also into the Internet and cloud garbage. Someone elsewhere in this thread pointed out that a lot of Makers donât have reliable or fast Internet. That is another reason why that scheme is not workable for the Maker environment.
There was TurboCad for $29.95 or something like that. There were other CAD programs in the same price range. Additionally, there were tons of other programs similarly priced.
Thatâs why elsewhere in this thread, I mentioned a lease option for corporations and a buy option for individuals.
Not ALWAYS. In 1981, I bought a IBM PC for $5k. Everytime that Iâve purchased a Brand name PC since then, I have never paid more than $5k including this past fall when I bought a loaded laptop for $4.6k that was way more capable than the original PC. Along the way, I purchased home brew computers than were way less than that.
Prices will go up but there is no reason why the model has to change to so drastically raise prices except for corporate greed.
I first used SketchUp in version 3. Back then you would get 8 hours of trial time, and with only going back to try more things now and then (it wasnât for my job, just personal interest), I managed to stay within the trial time for SketchUp 3 and 4. Then I had a reason to use SketchUp more, and bought version 5. It was around $500. Not long after that Google acquired SketchUp, and version 6 was the first one that had a Free version. When SketchUp left Google and went to Trimble, around 8 years ago, the Free version was rebranded as SketchUp Make.
I paid about $95 for the updates to version 6 and 7, then got involved with the Google forums, and fortunately didnât need to pay for updates after that.
So, for five versions there was only the option to pay for SketchUp, and in all this time the price has only gone up by about $80. It may seem like itâs gone up more, being $495 when I got it and $695 now. Thatâs because at some point they added in the maintenance and support cost for the first 12 months. You now pay $575 for SketchUp, and $120 for the first 12 months of updates, and donât have the option to skip the updates and support.
so today we have the inevetable news about subscription payment are the only option to buy skecthup. that in said will kill the Make 2017 in the next near future. dang i hope i can pay cheaper for hobyist only. not $300 a year.
SketchUp Make 2017 will continue to work/run as long as the operating system allows it. An OS or graphics card (driver) update could theoretically break it, but if you have a copy of the installer, we canât âkillâ it.
They only exist because of the people donât forget your roots