Quote - Ever had to deal with Autodesk (Maya)?

Yep.

And about a year ago I purchased a new application for several hundred dollars that was touted as compatible with Vista. It never worked at all in Vista, and it never worked properly in XP. I was told I could not return it because, although I bought it from an authorized dealer, the dealer had not been authorized to sell it to me at a discount, which he had done. I was also told a free update, to make it compatible with Vista, would be forthcoming in a month or two.

About 10 months later, they came out with the update, and guess what? Not free. They want another $300 for it. I complained and was told whoever told me it would be free was not authorized to do that and that the promise would not be honored.

So here I still am with a relatively expensive, still-buggy application that I still cannot use in my OS of choice, even though it was originally promoted as being fully compatible with that OS.

Needless to say, I am not eager to do much business with them these days. Further, I will never again purchase a software product when it is first released. I will wait, and wait and wait, just as long as I can stand it, and then read and read as much as I have time and energy for to see what other users' experience has been.

And even then, I may still not purchase, because, frankly, I'm tempted to stop buying software altogether.

Over many years, I have put out $1000's only to see those same products become free, or discounted to the point that they might as well have been made free.

Yes, I had use of them all that time before they became free, or nearly so, but in some cases, I'd just bought the darn things shortly (a couple of times less than 2 weeks) before they became free, or nearly free. And in all but one case I was not offered any kind of compensation.

I won't go into any more detail than that, but it does not seem a very good way to reward loyal, long-time customers, and/or paying customers, and I think I am now about done with it.

I'm not saying I'm ready to become a pirate, but considering how they operate, I am starting to wonder if some of the management in these companies don't deserve to have their intellectual property stolen (not that their lowly employees likely deserve it), and I'm also looking a lot longer and harder at open source solutions these days.

Oops. Sorry for the rant.