Pricing & limitations of educational software

[stefan]

There have been some discussions on the use of student-versions for (illegal) commercial use.

Do you think that is such a problem? I believe that when a student is doing commercial work:

- (s)he has too much time that he is not spending on his/her studies;
- (s)he will use an illegal copy instead of a legal student version.

Therefore (it's only an opinion) it might be better to make the student version more attractive, but not disabling too much.

The Banner

The banner on the renderings from the ArchiCAD student version is not too bad. It's the Graphisoft feather and it looks tastefull. But it keeps students from using a legal version!
There are not many students on our school that actually use ArchiCAD and the banner is surely not convincing many of them to switch. That said, AutoCAD (which they use) has a printing banner as well and it comes with the files and all exported blocks.

The Price

Although I understand that there are costs involved into producing a special (feature-limited) version of ArchiCAD, I think that a student version should be free. You could provide schools with a master copy and the legal right to distribute it with full-time students from their institution.

After all, it are precisely those students that will be the customers of tomorrow and who on this list isn't convinced that you should have worked with ArchiCAD to understand what it is that it does! Who hasn't heard Autodesk-users describe ArchiCAD as a toy and as non-conforming to standards?

Piracy is hard to stop, but by making handicapped student versions (and ask $75 for it, when the AutoCAD student version can be had for less then half of it), you are not encouraging students to switch. And once they learned AutoCAD they are happy and stay there.

---> And wouldn't it be possible that there is only one ArchiCAD installation CD, that installs as a demo version when not registered (viewing and printing, but no saving), which becomes a student version after registration (compatible with files, but with a banner on prints & renderings) and turns into the regular full version when you attach the dongle? One version to rule them all?

[Eduardo Rolon]

Stephan I agree that the limitations are not that limiting, and also i agree with your logic about doing commercial work by students.
The main limitaion is that you are not able to open the AC-S file in AC full. Not being able to export the file to AutoCAD I think is the second most important limitation. The problem I have with the banner is that it does not look good when you are presenting your thesis drawings though it is small enough to be ignored.
Anyway all except the compatability with AC-full have work arounds. You can export to dwg and you can take the banner out of the drawings. So those limitations do nothing to the program. Also there might be a trick to get out of the student vs full compatability, which I have not tried yet.
The only different issue here is price since in my neck of the woods the AC-S version is cheaper than the AutoCAD student version ($99.00 for AC vs $600.00 for AutoCad student unlimited, $175.00 for the one year limit version) but pirated Autocad is cheaper.
To end this rambling thought, I did a little survey amongst my students and their thinking on the matter regarding piracy is that since the full programs cost too much for them they say that they will use the pirated versions up to the point that they can buy the full ones. The only program that I know that some have bought is Sketch-up since the full version only cost $475.00.
So one suggestion is that GS make a special price for students to buy their own ACfull licence once they graduate from school, this will serve as promotion to GS since by default students will show what AC can do once they start working on different architectural offices. GS will make money when the student upgrades or if the office that they end up switches.

[stefan]

ejrolon wrote:
So one suggestion is that GS make a special price for students to buy their own ACfull licence once they graduate from school, this will serve as promotion to GS since by default students will show what AC can do once they start working on different architectural offices. GS will make money when the student upgrades or if the office that they end up switches.

They do that in Belgium 😉 When you are in your internship (2 years in Belgium) you can buy a full seat with an enormous reduction. I missed that one a few years ago: I allready bought AC 6.0 full when that action started... (I'm still a bit angry about it 😉 ).

And in Belgium, AutoCAD student version is about $90 + 21%taxes but only $30 + taxes in a group-sale. This is for a 2-year license. That is very competitive!

ArchiCAD student is $75 + 21% taxes.

And because we use AutoCAD in our classes, they will use AutoCAD (bought or not).

[TomWaltz]

Our old software, Arris, sold non-upgradable software to Students. If you bought version 7 Student, it was fully compatible with the Pro version, but you had to buy Version 8 Student when it came out. There was no discount upgrade in place.

They charged $500 at the time, but that later dropped to $99.

[Eduardo Rolon]

Our old software, Arris, sold non-upgradable software to Students. If you bought version 7 Student, it was fully compatible with the Pro version, but you had to buy Version 8 Student when it came out. There was no discount upgrade in place.

They charged $500 at the time, but that later dropped to $99.

That sounds like good idea

[david nicholson-cole]

stefan wrote:
Although I understand that there are costs involved into producing a special (feature-limited) version of ArchiCAD, I think that a student version should be free. You could provide schools with a master copy and the legal right to distribute it with full-time students from their institution.

We distribute ArchiCAD 8.1 to Students in Nottingham for TWO POUNDS. The School pays an annual licence fee to Graphisoft, in return for a 50 user keyserver, and the right to issue free disks to Students. As we like to have nicely printed disks, we buy them ready pressed and printed from GS and sell them for 2£. this is better than buying blanks and spending 10-12 mins each, copying them onto blanks.

[stefan]

£2 is about free 😉

That seems a good solution, David.

[Anonymous]

In New Zealand the student version is free. Maybe the local distributers really want to penetrate the industry fast!

And that is essential for students.

They also do special 'conversion' pricing from time to time. Good on them.

[stefan]

Last quote from my dealer:
EURO 25 for a student version
But they are not available at the moment

[stefan]

And new quote from my dealer:
EUR 50, but then you have a fully enabled version, including a dongle and no time-out. This sounds interesting.