I believe at one time Bentley had the option of "renting" the software on an as-needed basis.
I could get a license for 3 months or a set period of time. I don't know if this is still an option
today or not as this was a few years ago when I first started my business.
I'm not sure about Bentley reseller either. I deal directly with Bentley now, when and
if I ever have an issue.
I will be calling them up as I just got an email to renew my Bentley Select
and it seems they want to do two years at a time. That part doesn't make me
very happy as it will be twice the amount as I have projected.
On thing mentioned is the yearly releases and the quality or lack thereof with the yearly releases.
I agree that stability is an issue with yearly releases. Not everyone one will utilize every release.
One reason not mentioned for yearly releases is competition. Since Microstation came out with
DWG capability (V8), Autodesk has changed there release schedule so that once Bentley caught up
to Autocad features, a new release came out.
As far as the best deal, I bounce around from so many versions that are set by the client that subscription
makes the most sense for me. I bought vanilla 2007 and when 2009 came out, I upgraded to MEP 2009
and I'm working in Building Systems 2006. I only installed vanilla 2008 to preview the software to do a proposal
of AU. I'm a small company and trying to come up with $4k+ for software is hard. A yearly charge of $1k is
much more manageable.
Pieter