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The reason that Autodesk are releasing a new version every year is simple. They want you to buy the subscription. If you really think that they've doubled their development efforts over the past 3 years I have a bridge I'd like to sell you. While you can look at it from the point of view that, compared to the prices of other things, AutoCAD is getting cheaper... the fact, for me and my company at least, is that we can't afford to constantly upgrade just because Autodesk told us we have to. We need to be able to interface with other firms who did get sucked into the subscription scam so we are in a catch-22.
We upgraded to AutoCAD 2002 about 3 years ago. For my company, in my location, in our economy, it's a very, very, very difficult thing for us to drop several thousand dollars down on software that we don't actually want or need. The only reason we upgraded to 2002 was because Autodesk told us that, if we didn't, then the next release wouldn't be available to us as an upgrade. I presume that, once Autodesk begins to officially talk about 2006 they will drop a little note telling us that we'd better upgrade now or we'll really have to pay next year.
When 2004 was released, my boss asked me if we should upgrade then. We couldn't afford it, but he was worried about losing the opportunity to upgrade when the next release came out. I looked into AutoCAD 2004 and, for us, it offered 1 and only 1 feature that we might have been able to take advantage of. Tabs in MText. Whoop-de-friggin-doo. How could I justify having him spend all of that money for something so ridiculous? I couldn't. So I told him that, in my opinion, Autodesk were a bunch of crooks and he should hold off on upgrading until they actually have him over the barrel again.
Well it seems like Autodesk is working hard to put customers over the barrel. You'd think they would at least supply the lubricant!
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