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Here's something to ponder. But first, and very importantly, forget about Piracy and hardware. This question is about the real value of software.

So how much is it really worth?
You can't realistically make a game without game making software. Sure, you can dig deep into the inner workings of C++ or even assembler. But all that does is prove the real worth of game making software.

You can't burn a DVD home video without DVD authoring software. Again, you could, but how long would it take you to construct the necessary files and compile them into an acceptable format?

On the other hand, would you actually have the desire to do these things if the means weren't made available to you? Does the product make the market, and have to face the fact that the price must force the demand needed to make it viable?

Pick a product and put a real value on it...it could make interesting reading.

Here's my contribution...

Product: DVD Lab
Description: DVD authoring and burning application
Actual price : $99 (~ £60)


Real Value: £300. That's the price I'd put on it. Allowing me to put my kids on DVD, share it with family, got to be worth a reasonable amount of money. And the product is very well featured, and a breeze to work with.

Of course, I wouldn't buy it if it was £300. Like I say, the product and it's price has made the market. But it should be a luxury item in my estimation.

How much money people have affects the price greatly, perhaps 20 people can buy DVD Lab at 60 pounds but only 2 people can afford it at 300 pounds. Overall, although it is priced less then it is worth they get more sales and ultimately make more money anyway.

This also means that the same person could probably afford a second piece of software as well and hence increase that software's sales also, if DVD Lab were 300 pounds, then they would probably only buy it when they go to the computer store.

Well in a manufacturing environment, a work in progress tracking and scheduling system could cost £30,000.

Yet I'm gonna be developing one soon, which in terms of my salary, will cost around £8,000.

The expensive option will have been designed and tested fully by a team, but in reality the cheaper home-grown option is actually worth a lot more - because it will save money due to it's adaptability and it'll do exactly what we need it to do. To hire the expensive options team to do basically the same job as me, would probably cost around £100,000.

For me the real value in software is in how expensive the problems it solves are, in business people expect to pay thousands for software that will hopefully pay for itself with the improvements it makes, but the initial cost bears no relation to the money it saves.


Van-B

I think one of the real values of software is to do with how much TIME it saves you. For example - I use FTP Voyager 11 to upload files to web servers. It costs me about $60 a year with all the updates, etc. Now I *could* have just opened up a DOS prompt and done it by hand the "old" way, but it would have taken me significantly longer. Therefore to me, it is worth the money because it saves me so much time.

I use WinRAR instead of WinZIP because it has so many extra features that save me time. I use Directory Opus instead of Windows Explorer for the same reason. I'll use Zend Studio to debug my PHP scripts because it's significantly faster than doing it "by hand".

For me it's all about the speed of getting something done - that is what gives an application real value to me. Games (and certain programs like DB) also have an Entertainment value too, but it isn't as important to me personally.

Cheers,

Rich

I suppose I'd agree with Rich... but to a point.
Isn't just time but how much easier you find it to handle.

Good example for me is 3D Studio Max 5 and 6.
Max 6 is more stable, and saves me alot of time on many things. However the new layout throws me off-balance and breaks concentration when I reach for a tool and it is no longer where I have come to expect it from 3/4/5.
So although 6 has some nice Character Animation and Dynamics upgrade which could save me time; the UI destroys my concentrations meaning that my work comes out a little rushed and flustered.

So even though 6 saves me time; I would say it is worth considerably less than 5 because of the changes made.

I mean it's like OfficeXP, alot of people seem to believe I'm stupid for choosing it because a) it costs so much, b) it is too buggy ,(c) it's microsoft)
(well let set aside who it's made by and being buggy is amusing as it's never done anything wrong to me)

It saves me ALOT of time because I can sit down plug in my microphone and whilst I'm working on a model in Maya or code in C++ I can sit there and create the readme for what i'm doing by talking to Word.
This assures me of many things:
a) the Grammar is correct as I'm speaking it; and Word compensates for speech gammar.
b) spelling is perfect (as i'm not typing and can't make a mistake).
c) punctuation is correct. let's face it most of us have hardly perfect punctuation.

This saves me alot of time, when you take into account that everything in the interface is created to be very simple to access amongst quite literally thousands of options (ever sat down and looked at the Setting Panel hahaa)... for me the price tag on Word of £50 is quite frankly a bargin.

I very rare find a free or cheap program which really stands up to my expectations of 'Quality', 'Presentation' and 'Ease of Use'.
Just because I've grown up on computers and know alot of the in/outs doesn't mean I don't want to sit down and use a nice idiot-proof program.
Sorry but Linux users are making life harder for themselves working through a CLI from my perspective because they're just well idiots who like to waste time. (my girl does this cause she claims it's the *only* way to use an OS... but really with GTK and SDL, why?!)

A value worth of a product should also be based on it's stability.
Photoshop 8 is a bitch to use, even hardened vetrans of it agree that; but it never crashes. Painter 8 is a dream to use, but it'll corrupt your work at the drop of a hat.
They both have the same price tag; one obviously doesn't earn it, as what good is a program if it looses the work you just did?

I dunno... I also find just as much worth is the developers capability to update if/when the time arrises.
Norton is worth every penny because they update almost on a daily basis making the product far more secure and power giving it better definitions and adding newly created virus protection almost as soon as these virii are released.
If on the other hand you take McAfee, it bitchest at your system that there are virus (when there obviously aren't... i mean from a clean reinstall fgs!?! i know ppl claim Windows ia virus but McAfee takes the piss), they update one a month (if that) - quite frankly i was sorely disappointed with that product::

I'll leave this with a final thought, one Kat said in irc last nite: "Amatures made the Arc, and Professionals made the Titanic".
Names mean nothing, quality means everything.

That's the top 2 on my list, outside of the recreation arena.

The easiest way to evaluate anything is to put a price on your own time (and not to undervalue your time). If you can earn £50 / hour, even if you don't have the means right now, that's the value of your time. You don't have to spend every hour earning £50.
So if you have a tool that saves you 100 hours in a year, you have the potential to earn more money, and enjoy more free time. Or...you can put the spare time towards acheiving your "£50 / hour" status.

Now your software is worth £5000, albeit it in real money and well earned recreation time.