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Old 04-23-03, 01:07 PM   #14 (permalink)
Double-Trinity
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Join Date: Feb 2003
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Although I do find some of the high pricing irritating, I do understand WHY the prices are that way. I bought my copy back when they had a deal to get the windows and Pocket version for $50. That's $50 for two very fine products that each required a considerable amount of development time (I've just started doing some programming myself, but I have an undestanding of the amount of effort it takes to build a good program). The amount of time it takes to port a prorgam from windows to CE is also quite immense, and requires rebuilding a large portion of the code, and then recompiling, plus that means a completely separate bug testing phase, and optimization process. All that takes lots and lots of time. True, it is a PDA that you probably spent $250 - $350 on (or even more)... but that's enough money to buy a previous-generation PC too, and software doesn't cost any less on that than it does on a $2,000 PC.

Also, It is understandable that prices are higher on Pocket PC because there is a much much smaller market. Development costs are high, and are a flat cost, when the reasonable maximum number of units you can sell is many many times smaller on the Pocket PC platform than other platforms, your potential for profit is limited, but your flat costs don't get any smaller.

Considering I got a high quality word processor for both Windows and for Pocket PC, which I use all the time, and probably will contiue to use for several years, $50 is well worth it. That's the same as what you'd spend on a typical new-release game.
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