NASLite Network Attached Storage

I bought NASLITE2-USB but over 180 days ago. I would like to be able to get the latest updated release, however I am not wishing to upgrade to any new product.

Is there a way for me to buy a "Maintenance" contract, or do you expect every faithful user to pay 35% discounted price EVERY 6 months for staying up to date with the current product? That means that being a "faithful" customer, I am rewarded by being charged 2x65%= 130% purchase price per year, every year, just to stay up to date on a product I have already paid for. Even Microsoft doesn't do that! And we all love MS, don't we?

Well,

This is a valid point that does need consideration. Let us look at the current system and see if and how to implement that.

How do others feel about this question?

I think I read somewhere that the download counter has been upped to 15, so I would suggest that a charge of 20% of the license, per year should provide 12 months of maintenance and every purchase of this would reset your counter.

Most other programs I have come across provide free maintenance, however I am a firm supporter of NASLITE and want to make sure that its developers can realize an income, so I would recommend a solution that is fair to both the users and the developers.

Any other suggestions?

Same issue here. Any relaxing of the policy would be great.

Yes indeed!

As a very recent adopter of the USB, I would be very interested in a maintenance option. One possibility would be to charge a $10 - $20 fee for access to updates of your licensed product until next *major* update (i.e. 2.?? > 3.00). This could be added in to the initial purchase price or listed as an optional purchase at the time of initial purchase.

NickC wrote 'One possibility would be to charge a $10 - $20 fee for access to updates of your licensed product until next *major* update (i.e. 2.?? > 3.00).'

Why pay, if Server Elements is still releasing BUG FIXES 180 days after the initial purchase date then something is seriously wrong!

mont

The updates are not so much bug fixes but added features. To be honest I rather have SE raise the price of NL2 and provide the updates for free (no download or 180 day limit). Ralph & Tony, how much would the price for NL2 USB&CDD be with such a service? Having to pay for bug fixes & patches is not attractive from a customer point of view. All of us obviously like NL2 and don't mind paying for the product, it's just the idea of having to pay every 180 days that is not such a cool thing

The download counter is irrelevant since at best one can only download 2 new versions over a six months period. I think the counter was placed there to curtail illegal downloading.

In June 2006 I bought Naslite+ and in early July Naslite 2.0 came out which I could not download.

When 2.01 came out end of July I "upgraded" my 6weeks old NASlite+ to 2.01 on 2 August.

I downloaded both 2.02 and 2.03 that came out in September and December 2006 respectively. I still use 2.02 and was hot for 2.04.

Too bad 2.04 came out, a few days after my 6months had expired.

I believe that this policy needs to be looked at by Serverelements since in practice it may not offer much to us, the customers.

I'm not sure that I'd like a higher price for the software. I've purchased over 100 licenses so far and will continue to do that for as long as some of my clients pick it over the alternatives. The way things are now, it really costs me only $20 for each copy. I end up buying multiples within the 6 month period, so there is always a valid link I can use to get the update.

For home users it is probably less convenient because they already own a license they can use. The pszilard approach seems the best for those cases. I'd be against a price hike. Although, Naslite is such a good value that it really wouldn't matter.

I know this is a move away from the original topic but what BUGS are we talking about here? I’d hate to think that we have sold buggy software without providing a path of corrective action. Any examples will be most helpful.

Plenty of POSSIBLE BUGS & THEIR FIXES:

- Add feature to disallow opening of an Administration Utility console if one is already running. POSSIBLE BUG
- Add mirror event error alarm. POSSIBLE BUG
- Update rsync binary to latest stable.ORIGINAL OBVIOUSLY UNSTABLE POSSIBLE BUG
- Update vsftpd binary to the latest stable. ORIGINAL OBVIOUSLY UNSTABLE POSSIBLE BUG
- Update the connected clients section of the Status Pages in order to increase efficiency as well as accuracy. INNACURATE & INEFFICIENT.POSSIBLE BUG
- Update Status Pages generation code with general tweaks and updates. POSSIBLE BUG
- Update Administration Utility management code with general tweaks and updates. POSSIBLE BUG
- Perform general code cleanup. POSSIBLE BUG CLEANUP.

Don't get me wrong I like your software. I just resent having to pay for what seems like a bug fix release which should be free.
Your remarks seem to say that this release is purely cosmetic, if so make it a free release and charge when you have a radical change in software!

All you are going to do by enforcing this 180 day limit is drive loyal customers to the likes of LIMEWIRE & KAZAA to download a snide copy.

mont

Tony asked for examples not a conspiracy theory.

Quote:Tony asked for examples not a conspiracy theory.

Well you two are the experts! Obviously us small home users have no idea whatsoever goes into into bugfixes, sorry I mean new releases.

Oh well this is going nowhere, I suppose I will have to cough up some more bucks if I want an update. As a humble home user I clearly have no idea or opinion what I am talking about according to Ralph.

Hang about, are most Naslite users not home users, stop having opinions you customers, Server Elements does'nt like it!

mont ( where did I put that $29.95)

That’s an interesting interpretation Mont. Can you help us define a bug as opposed to an improvement so we can do a better job of documenting our release history? I was pretty sure we were improving the software rather than fixing bugs.

I also agreed with the point made in the original post, but you obviously consider it insufficient. We try and make very sure that the products we develop and sell are as stable and robust as one can expect. That means we debug for a long time before we release things publicly. Then there are support emails. Ralph and I field literally thousands of emails daily. The sad part about that is most of those emails are from people that can’t properly prepare their hardware or have little or no knowledge about basic networking. Not NASLite related at all. We help regardless since we know that we have an obligation to paying customers.

All of those activities as well as development require funding that we have to generate somehow. We try to keep the cost of our products as low as possible, but please understand that we don’t have the benefit of selling through CompUSA or Office Max.

Our current business model is as lean as we can make it without becoming a charity. We are not asking for donations, but we are also not going to put ourselves in a position where we can no longer function as a business.

That said, I’ll back off and let people have their say on the subject.