While Trimble Outdoors looks like a neat little piece of software for GPS-enabled mobile phones, enabling not just mapping but breadcrumb trail marking and geotagged photos and video, the pricing structure just announced on Alltel is peculiar: $1.99 a day, $5.99 a month, or $40 per year.
Do people regularly rent mobile software by the day? I had no idea.
DocumentsToGo costs $70 for the current version forever, for $50/year for what I presume includes possible major upgrades.
Renting software has a huge psychological barrier to me. I’d feel better about it if I knew I was paying for an “upgrade protection plan” than for continued use of the existing version. Maybe I’m suffering from a case of loss aversion.
Spanning Sync, a ical/gcal/WM6 sync tool, is available for rent ($25/year) or purchase ($65). Either way, too rich for my blood (and to read the online reviews, I’m not the only one who feels that way.)
On my old cell phone, I bought a few games only to have them ‘expire’ after two months…I only played them once or twice on an airplane. Go to play a few months later trapped on a plane…and no go.
Worse, it really never mentioned this anywhere near the purchase…I’m certain it was in the fine print, but nothing that reached out and bit ya.
I really don’t like the idea of expiring software…
Verizon does something similar, they had Oregon Trail (YES!) for $3.49/mo or $6.99 to purchase. I have misgivings about both options, since on one hand I might want to play Oregon Trail (WOO!) on a plane 6 months down the road and have already canceled the “rental” after a month. On the other hand buying the game doesn’t seem to actually be buying it, due to it being locked to my current handset (I think), so when I upgrade phones it’s gone anyway.
Much to Verizon’s chagrin, I won’t buy any games/software because of this quandary. Way to go, you soul sucking, money grubbing asshats.
Verizon also has a similar plan for their VZNavigator, which is another GPS program. I forget the precise price, but it was around $10 per day, with much higher costs for monthly and yearly subscriptions. I think you also had to pay for the data to the phone if you didn’t have a data plan to update maps, etc. I decided the paper maps in my glove box were sufficient.
I wish T-Mobile did that with sidekick apps, say a buck a day until you reach the purchase price. I’d have spent far more money if I was only spending a buck or two to try an app, rather than $7 and finding out I don’t like it.
I’m suddenly reminded of how Verizon loves to disable Bluetooth features on their phones so that you have to pay them as a toll keeper for equivalent service.
I think BlackBerry Maps (with turn-by-turn directions) with the $20/mo T-Mobile complete data plan is the best thing ever on a phone.
It used to be this way for some games on my old sprint phone thankfully tetris was a 1 time purchase…
The Garmin software on Helio is $2.99/day I think. Absolutely not worth it, when you’ve got Google maps there for free.
Seems quite a good way of doing a ‘try before you buy’ – or equally for stuff you know you’ll only use briefly (e.g. getting mapping software for a specific trip to another country).