"Actually, one of the next steps is downloading the software to whatever computer your at and paying a rental fee to use it." - Hoo boy! In a pig's eye. If you think about it this may not be a bad idea if a suitable billing mechanism and price was established. Imagine that you download the program to your system once. If the program is updated your installation will be automatically, with your permission, patched. You would be charged for each session and it would be time limited, maybe 2-4 hours. Let's assume a per session charge of ten cents. If run four times a day, five days a week over a three year period this would cost you about the same as buying P5 at $329. This has several advantages for the user: 1. you can spread your financial investment over an extended period of time. 2. if you discover that the program is not really very useful to you, or your needs change, your monetary loss is minimal, if any. 3. if you need a program for just one or two projects it will not cost as much as an outright purchase 4. it is an inexpensive means to "test drive" a program without any limitations or time limit 5. you will always be running the current version- no need to upgrade For the publisher: 1. a continual cashflow 2. would be able to "sell" to people who can not afford a cash layout of several hundred but can afford $20 a month 3. generate a modest income from those who like to play with a program to see what it is all about but will never really otherwise use or buy it. 4. "sell" to people who only need it once in a while 5. possible piracy reduction. Who would steal just for pennies a day? There are probably many other advantages as well for both sides. Of course, we need a payment system where the transaction cost is not more than the fee charge. Perhaps one could buy "blocks of time". If there are sufficient transactions this is undoubtably possible. I could go for something like this and suspect that the legitimate user base would be much larger. This seems to make some sense so will probably never happen. - Jack