The Crappy Upgrade Companies

Dont buy from Polar, Ahead Nero or Corex Cardscan

I have started to get a real grudge against the companies who cheat their users of upgrades at reasonable cost.

If you read more on my blog – you can see my grudge against Polar, who is NOT providing an upgrade of their running software – and prefers to do a name change to convince people to buy a new watch – but the software is still the same – that kind’a makes a bad taste in my mouth. One that really inspires people to be pirates and copy the offending companies software. But now I got a couple more.

But I got TWO new additions to my hall of shame and blame

Ahead Software – Nero. Well you go out buy a nice DVD burner drive and get Ahead Nero. Yepiii you think – only to find out the version included is Nero 6 – and does not work with Microsoft Windows Vista. Vista is even nice enough to tell you that Ahead got an upgrade for Nero 6 to make it work – but Nero tells you otherwise. You need to buy an upgrade to get Vista Support. Only Nero 7 runs on Vista. Great you think – until you find out that the upgrade version is only about $10 cheaper than buying a brand new copy.

Well okay I thought – I got a FULL version 6 I bought once - the discount on that might be a lot higher. But nope – a few pennies more in discount – upgrade cost 80% of new price. Hurray... All i wanted was a freekin’ DVD burning software. But says Nero – we have put so much more in the package.. I DON’T WAN’T MORE – I just want to do my basic tasks such as burning a DVD on Vista. I don’t want a multimedia madness centre that fills my computer with unusable features. If I wanted them – I would PAY for them.

Calling it an upgrade is an insult...

Which moves me on to... CARDSCAN

Corex Techologies / CardScan has been in my arsenal of business tools for a long time. The software works by scanning business cards and putting the data into Outlook – a really nice feature –and I have been a very happy client.

I got 2 licenses – a 5 user license and a single user. To make the story short – I paid $79 for my full version of CardScan 1 ½ years ago. I got a nice mail telling me Version 8 was online and I could upgrade. Cool I thought might finally recognise Danish language, a feature I have been missing for many years.

But surprise surprise - Cardscan has almost doubled the price of the software to $149. And if you are an old customer – they value your upgrade with a 20% discount... Yes – 20% - from $149 to $119. Damn still 50% more than the license I bought earlier. And the news? Well now you can directly print on dymo labels + they have made an affiliate program – giving lead referrers an 8-13% referral fee. Hurray.. Not really ground breaking upgrade warranting a 150% upgrade cost is it?

But thanks god my CardScan 7 works on Vista so no need to upgrade at all – and that was last time my companies have done any business with them.

So in SHORT – DONT BUY UPGRADES or products from Ahead Nero, Polar and Corex CardScan – don’t even think about buying their products unless you are fine by being screwed for your hard earned dollars.