OSNews

Exactly right. I got excited when I read the headline, a demo cd. I figured I'll just download it from bit torrent. Then I kept reading, it was $12 from a reseller. That immediately turned me off. Isn't the point of a demo to try it before I buy it? I'm not going to pay $12 just to see if it works on my machine or not. And if it doesn't, then I'm out $12. If they want their product to gain more mass they better drop the price on that demo cd.

That's a good idea, and I think you should email that suggestion to yT, or (perhaps better yet) post it on their discussion forums for all to see, so they can also reply in public

But then again. What's preventing those people from downloading the full pirated Zeta off the net instead? It's just as easy and just as illegal.

They could lock the demo cd to at least make it harder to intall (don't know if they've done that already). Won't be hard to bypass, but it will at least be a little harder.

They should really put up an official torrent for this.

I agree, for the most part. While it would be pretty easy to install the contents of the CD to a HDD partition, it would still probably require some existing knowledge of BeOS. I guess they want to prevent the live CD from being seen as a cheap way for R5 users to install Zeta. Of course, I'm tempted to pick it up for exactly that reason.

If you don't care to spend the money for the CD then don't.

Even if it is free with a magazine it is necessary to buy the magazine. Surely someone will cry and whine about that.

In time there may be a download option but I would not recommend it to yT. If someone is not willing to pay a nominal handling charge to check their hardware then they are not the customer yT is probably looking for. YellowTab is selling software, they are not giving it away. They need customers fedup with hassling with SW and willing to pay for and try an alternative solution even if it does not work out for them.

When Haiku comes out it will available more freely but you will have to wait until that time. I don't have to wait because I am not concerned about a nominal handling charge. I think it is a good idea at a fair price.

It'd be one thing if it was guarenteed to work, and you are just seeing if you actually like the OS.

What if it won't even boot on your system?

Maybe part of their strategy is counting on people to complain when it DOESN'T work on their system, then they can get a better idea of what hardware it doesn't function properly on... afterall, they certainly can't test every configuration out there.

I suspect if someone complains loud enough and yT agrees that it doesn't work on that particular hardware configuration that they'll refund the money.

If yT's market was mainly companies then I would agree with you. But it's clearly not, and most regular consumers won't pay for a demo version of an OS they probably never heard of before.
This isn't 1998 and yT isn't in the position that they like to pretend that they are. Windows, MacOS and Linux are good enough now and as a result less people are desperate for an alternative. They will have to try a lot harder to catch peoples interest. Making it as easy as possible for them to try out the OS should be an obvious thing to do in their position.

Personally I won't buy anything from them even though I am a big BeOS fan, or perhaps because of that.
They have had a complete lack of direction right from the start. From spending a huge amount of time on an installer that nobody asked for to a halfassed attempt to enter the HTPC market.
They had a chance to do something good, they had a chance to enter a niche and expand from there, but they blew it by wanting to be everything everywhere. Now they have a product that is pretty much BeOS R5 without the elegance.
If they provide me something that linux can't give me and I'm there. Like a port of Mackie Tracktion for example. It shouldn't be that hard since the framework is opensource and portable, and the developer is interested in alternative OSs. But they won't come to yT, trust me. yT will have to come to them.

"This isn't 1998 and yT isn't in the position that they like to pretend that they are. Windows, MacOS and Linux are good enough now and as a result less people are desperate for an alternative."

Exactly. In all honesty they are all good enough, even if sometimes we fight to death over which one is better.

Here is a case where a commenter by the identifier of Rain objects as follows:

"If yT's market was mainly companies then I would agree with you. But it's clearly not, and most regular consumers won't pay for a demo version of an OS they probably never heard of before."

I agree. It is only users "fedup" that will be interested in trying it on their hardware. Yes, they will pay for it if it is convenient. Most users will not go through the hassle of downloading and trying to burn a bootable CD, ever. Only more advanced users will ever even consider burning anything on a CD IMO.

Rain claims:

"Personally I won't buy anything from them even though I am a big BeOS fan, or perhaps because of that."

I define "fan" as someone who offers real support. Lets say spent $50 to $100 on products or services or their time related to the product in the last year. A good example might be an Ipod fan or a Haiku coder.

If you are a fan then spend your money on the product or related products so the entire culture and community can grow - both open source and commercial. I am a fan because I am grateful and supportive of any and all effort put into furthering the community. Just having an opinion does not make you a fan. Be supportive, be encouraging, contribute real work or good will but don't be devisive, whining and critical and consider yourself a fan. Others may see through it.

If you are a fan then spend your money on the product or related products so the entire culture and community can grow - both open source and commercial. I am a fan because I am grateful and supportive of any and all effort put into furthering the community.

I have invested a lot of money in BeOS software over the years, and I've spent a countless amount of time promoting and supporting BeOS. Heck I even bought R5 Pro even though I never installed it.
I want to spend my time and money where it makes sense to me. Just because something is related to BeOS doesn't mean that I automatically have to support it to be a "true fan". I don't like yT as a company (although there's some really nice people involved there) and I don't like what they have done to BeOS.
At least JLG had a clear vision. Bernd doesn't give me any indication of what his motivation behind yT really is. He doesn't give me a reason to believe in their software or that they have a future which I want to be a part of.
Makes as much sense as buying Linspire to support Ubuntu.

I am feeling badly about the fact that I haven't been active in the community for two years now, because I really want to be. But there have been some changes in my life which forced me to take a step back. And I have started a new company now which takes up most of my time, I also play in a band which is making progress, giving me even less spare time.
I just don't have the time to invest in the community right now. I wish I had. But I had to set my priorities differently in order make some progress with my own life (which was going straight downwards).

It's not free because it's a physical distrubution method. And that requires: time, product, packaging, postage and etc.. all material goods and services which cost money.

If it was downloadable, the cost would be bandwidth - which is potentially neglible. So it would be free.

Question is: do the real profits from the CD outweight the potential profits (and potential losses, if any) from the free, downloadable version?

And it's a marketing expense and therefore can be written off as a loss (at least in the US).

How do you think AOL can press and send out hundreds of thousands of CDs in wooden or metal boxes across the world a day?

If i remember correctly BeOs demo disk was 10$. Nothing new.

Yeah, but back then most people didn't have broadband access so it made sense to distribute CDs. This was changed in 2000 with BeOS PE wich was both downloadable and distributed with CDs (in magazines and such).

Charging money for shipping a demo CD is understandable for a small company. But they shouldn't make money off it, therefore it makes sense to make a torrent available.

Or you can download it for free (full version, example: SUSE 9.3). Or even better: you can have one sent to your home for free.

I sure as hell haven't bought it.

I don't use it, don't want it, certainly won't pay YT for it.

Good will, but you can't put a package around that and sell it by itself