Dear Rob & confocalists, As a manufacturer of software for the microscopic community, I'd like to react on your statement that we (the developers) insure our survival by peddling 'maintenance': it is true. All hard- and software companies try to create a steady-state cash flow by selling some sort of 'maintenance'. And if this maintenance consists of nothing or a recompile of the software for a new operating system version (a good developer just pushes the 'make' button and fetches more coffee) charching in the order of 10% of the list price per year is definitely too much. However, in most cases, and certainly in the case if you happen to own a copy of our image restoration software, you get a substantial amount of new functionality for you money. For instance, in the case of the Huygens System you would have gotten in the past year: -A toolbox to measure your microscope's point spread function. -A new restoration algorithm optimized for very noisy confocal images. -A noise-aware ratio imaging tool. -A host of 'trivia' like a 3D object labelling tool, bug fixes and the like. We think this is real value for your 10% maintenance money! >I'd like to see this issue discussed for the most part on the list. I too >have been really horrified at the costs of a 3-D system that is not a toy. >It seems that one must invest around $us50-100K (inclusive of hardware) to Although I'm not sure of US prices, I would say that you would be able to get an Imaris (Bitplane A.G., http://www.bitplane.ch)/Huygens combination and a decent SGI Indy to run it on for _substantially_ less than $us50k. >get into the game, then shell out an additional 5-10K annually for >"maintenance". How software requires maintenance is beyond me - apparently >it involves developers insuring their existance by increasing program >functionality in truly trivial amounts (for those that pay the fees), then >simply declaring the old version of the software for dead every 18 months >(for those that don't pay the fees). This smacks a bit of extortion, and >I'd be happy to learn of suppliers who do not subscribe to this philosophy. >Rob Palmer >Ctr Env Biotech > Hans van der Voort -- -------------------------------------------------------------- dr. Hans T.M. van der Voort ([log in to unmask]) Scientific Volume Imaging BV, J. Geradtsweg 181, 1222 PS Hilversum, The Netherlands. URL: http://www.svi.nl/ tel: (0)35-6859405 or (0)653-345445 fax: (0)35-6837971