No more boxed Adobe apps/licenses

[Simon Garrett]

Forgive me joining this late. This seems to be far and away the number 1 topic on every photo forum at the moment. I reckon around 95-99% of post I've read have been pretty negative, some of them vituperative. I've just read a new thread on dpreview suggesting where Adobe can stick their cloud (and that wasn't the angriest by a long chalk).

But I've also read comments from professionals saying we're all getting hysterical. For professional users who use more than one CS program it's quite a good deal.

But in case anyone doubts why it's bad for most amateur users (at least in the UK) just look at the prices:

• The upgrade for Photoshop cost (UK prices) around £190 (although Adobe seem to have withdrawn the upgrade now). That works out at just over £10 per month for an 18-month cycle. Yes, Adobe are talking of yearly cycles now, but I'll bet they haven't got 50% more developers - it just means we get fewer new features per upgrade. The price per month remains about the same for comparative purposes.
• In the bad old days, we could upgrade every 3rd release, which meant the cost was as little as £3.50 per month. Very few of the amateur photographers I know upgraded every time. In fact, of the professionals I know, 2 are on hard times at the moment and are still using CS4 or CS5.
• The single app price for CC is £17.58 per month. (Ignoring the one-year-only discount.)
• For amateurs, the price for Photoshop has gone up from as little as £3 per month last year to £17.58 per month next year.

I don't think I'm being hysterical in describing that as bad news for amateurs.

Adobe pricing over the last year has pretty much reflected the fact that amateur users aren't really their target market. First dropping the upgrade-the-last-three policy, now dropping CS, with pretty unattractive CC pricing for Photoshop-only users.

It's a reasonable commercial policy to price for your primary target market, but when part of your market (albeit a small one) gets tossed about in the wash, it's not surprising if the reaction is pretty strong.

[Colin Southern]

Graham's comment got me thinking: Apple ratcheted up their success by focusing on the opposite group with their hardware and software – everyday consumers, while stiffing the pros (can you say "MacPro" and "Final Cut X"?).

PS: Pixelmator today offered a "major update" with 100+ new features and improvements. Cost to current owners: Nothing.

It's interesting that oh-so-often we here about alternatives like Linux, MacOS, Gimp, Open Office (most of which are free or close to it) - and we're assured that they're "as least as good" or "better" - and yet it's still Windows / Office / Photoshop continue thrive against free / low-cost alternatives.

I'm sure folks will have many reasons for that - non of which will include the phrase "because they're actually better" ...

[Colin Southern]

some of them vituperative.

I'll have to look that up - although it sounds painful!

But I've also read comments from professionals saying we're all getting hysterical. For professional users who use more than one CS program it's quite a good deal.

I don't think it's anywhere near as bad a deal as many are trying to make out.

The upgrade for Photoshop cost (UK prices) around £190 (although Adobe seem to have withdrawn the upgrade now). That works out at just over £10 per month for an 18-month cycle. Yes, Adobe are talking of yearly cycles now, but I'll bet they haven't got 50% more developers - it just means we get fewer new features per upgrade. The price per month remains about the same for comparative purposes.

Not that I've heard - what I HAVE heard - right from the mouth of Adobe's Group Manager of Imaging Products (or similar such title) is that they'll be pushing out new features and fixes to CC users as soon as those features and fixes are ready -- without having to wait for the traditional update cycle.

In the bad old days, we could upgrade every 3rd release, which meant the cost was as little as £3.50 per month. Very few of the amateur photographers I know upgraded every time. In fact, of the professionals I know, 2 are on hard times at the moment and are still using CS4 or CS5.

In the "bad old days" you could upgrade from older releases, but the bigger the jump the more you paid. I think that to upgrade to CS6 you had to have already been on CS5 or CS5.5 - so your numbers don't stack up I'm afraid.

The single app price for CC is £17.58 per month. (Ignoring the one-year-only discount.)

And the single-app price for non CC subscription is? (answer about $700) - or THIRTY FIVE months (lets call it 3 years) worth of subscription -- by which time it will probably be TWO traditional update cycles behind whereas in comparison the CC members will have paid the same amount and be 100% current.

For amateurs, the price for Photoshop has gone up from as little as £3 per month last year to £17.58 per month next year.

Where did the £3 per month come from? Interestingly, Users as far back as CS3 can subscribe for just £8.78.

Adobe pricing over the last year has pretty much reflected the fact that amateur users aren't really their target market. First dropping the upgrade-the-last-three policy, now dropping CS, with pretty unattractive CC pricing for Photoshop-only users.

66c a day for access to THE cutting edge photo editing package is unattractive? Not in my book of accounting.

[plugsnpixels]

I work in higher ed and I've seen many students suddenly "want a Mac" after working with them ;-)

As for Office, I've seen OpenOffice open docs Word wouldn't. FWIW.

[Colin Southern]

I work in higher ed and I've seen many students suddenly "want a Mac" after working with them ;-)

And yet - as a world-wide platform - despite all this "wanting" they STILL only have (what is it?) 10%? 11%? market share? Why have they not wiped Microsoft off the planet yet?

As for Office, I've seen OpenOffice open docs Word wouldn't. FWIW.

Yep - like Lotus 123 files. What's the relevance though when 99.x% word processing / spreadshet attachments are *.doc, *.docx, *.xls, *.xldx documents created by Office?

[Mike Buckley]

My thinking: The people who are so strongly against Adobe's move should do two things:

1) Use competing software because doing so makes them feel better; and

2) Invest in Adobe because the very profitability that they abhor will inure to their benefit as an investor.

Alternatively, those people could suck it up, pay for the subscription, and invest in Adobe thinking that the profit from their investment will more than pay for the subscription cost that they hate to pay.

[Colin Southern]

My thinking: The people who are so strongly against Adobe's move should do two things:

1) Use competing software because doing so makes them feel better; and

2) Invest in Adobe because the very profitability that they abhor will inure to their benefit as an investor.

Alternatively, those people could suck it up, pay for the subscription, and invest in Adobe thinking that the profit from their investment will more than pay for the subscription cost that they hate to pay.

I like your thinking!

[plugsnpixels]

Actually Colin, it was a Word document! ;-)

[Glenn NK]

By far the most rational / non-hysterical / non-misery-loves-company take on it was from Scott Kelby (quoted below)

OTOH, Kelby' monologue might be compared to "Eastwooding". For those that haven't heard the term:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/defin...rm=eastwooding

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/...-speech-romney

Glenn

[Scott Stephen]

I like your thinking!

Most people on this site are not professional photographers who earn their living that way. Until now I recommended this site to EVERYONE as a welcome home for newbies and hobbyists. I am disappointed by the tone of responses here on this, though. 1. Amateurs don't matter and their money and their investment is unimportant, and 2. The real client of the company is the shareholders and, well, see number 1. About how the users are unimportant.

Sorry but it is an old and bad bad idea to rationalize an over expenditure by saying it is "equal" to x cups of coffee a month.

If CiC can figure out a way to profit by dumping the casual user, then go for it.

[John Morton]

It's heading that way. But there's more than the loss of privacy and independence. This is what I posted this past week elsewhere:

The cloud and the whole internet system - as wonderful and as useful as it is - has a serious Achilles heel: it can be sabotaged relatively easily, and also like any complex system is prone to failure. When the net goes down, a lot goes down with it. The following quotes are from the latest Maclean's Mag (a Cdn publication):

"In 1999, Internet service, phone lines, payment systems, and traffic lights across a large swath of Toronto crashed for a day - a technician dropped a wrench, which started a fire, which also brought down power to a hospital and stripped an estimated $1 billion in trades at the Toronto Stock Exchange."

". . a cut cable triggered a Sprint internet outage that grounded Alaska Airlines flights in the western USA"

"Last week, American Airlines entire fleet was grounded for hours due to a glitch in the company's reservation system".


Just think how delighted we'd all be if while working on our images with cloud based software, one of the above mishaps occurred.

Glenn

Well Glenn, more than one company has woken up to a very bad day now and again, thanks to the Internet:

"NEW YORK/BOSTON (Reuters) - In one of the biggest ever bank heists, a global cyber crime ring stole $45 million from two Middle Eastern banks by hacking into credit card processing firms and withdrawing money from ATMs in 27 countries, U.S. prosecutors said on Thursday.

"In the place of guns and masks, this cyber crime organization used laptops and the Internet," U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Loretta Lynch said at a news conference. "Moving as swiftly as data over the Internet, the organization worked its way from the computer systems of international corporations to the streets of New York City."

"The case demonstrates the major threat that cyber crime poses to banks around the world. It also shows how increasingly international and sophisticated criminal gangs have become, particularly those using the Internet.

"Prosecutors highlighted the "surgical precision" of these hackers, the global nature of their organization, and the speed and coordination with which they executed operations in 27 countries.

"Cyber experts said they believe the operation likely required the work of several hundred people, at least several of whom were highly skilled hackers capable of devising ways to penetrate well-protected financial systems.

"Hackers only need to find one vulnerability to cause millions of dollars of damage," said Mark Rasch, a former federal cyber crimes prosecutor, based in Bethesda, Maryland.

"An investigation is ongoing to see if other cells are operating in the country, Lynch said, adding that U.S. law enforcement had worked with counterparts in Japan, Canada, Germany, Romania, the United Arab Emirates, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Italy, Spain, Belgium, France, United Kingdom, Latvia, Estonia, Thailand, and Malaysia to uncover the ring."

But don't worry folks the Internet is perfectly safe, it's a perfectly safe place.

[Colin Southern]

Sorry but it is an old and bad bad idea to rationalize an over expenditure by saying it is "equal" to x cups of coffee a month.

Sorry Scott, but this is just hogwash.

First of all, it's not necessarily more expenditure; in many cases - over the course of a year - it's actually LESS expenditure.

Second, even if it is more expenditure, it's also MORE VALUE.

Third, Adobe continue to offer alternatives,

Forth, nobody is putting a gun to anyone's head and making them sign up.

Fifth, it VASTLY lowers the initial entry threshold.

[Wayland]

Most people on this site are not professional photographers who earn their living that way. Until now I recommended this site to EVERYONE as a welcome home for newbies and hobbyists. I am disappointed by the tone of responses here on this, though. 1. Amateurs don't matter and their money and their investment is unimportant, and 2. The real client of the company is the shareholders and, well, see number 1. About how the users are unimportant.

Sorry but it is an old and bad bad idea to rationalize an over expenditure by saying it is "equal" to x cups of coffee a month.

If CiC can figure out a way to profit by dumping the casual user, then go for it.

That attitude has disappointed me too, both here and on other forums.

Some years ago I moved from PSP to PS and the transition was not easy, PS is much less intuitive, customisable or user friendly. PSP had all the important features I needed at the time except for 16 bit editing but that difference no longer applies.

Many of the "must have" features that have appeared on PS such as Auto Save and the file browser that became Bridge and eventually Lightroom were features that were present on PSP years before. It's true that since being bought by Corel, development has slowed slightly but I suspect that Corel has just been given a huge incentive to pick the ball up and run with it.

There are one or two PS tools that I will miss but not enough to allow myself to be blackmailed for. I expect that the remaining differences between PSP and PS Cs6 will decrease fairly fast in the remaining lifetime of that program too.

I regularly lecture on digital post production to rising amateur photographers in the UK and from this day forward my lectures will be based around PSP with side notes for those who wish to bend over and use PS. I'll also outline my reasons for thinking that no truely creative individual should shackle themselves to such ransomware.

What the Adobe fanboys seem to forget when talking about what a good deal CC is for professional photographers with regular incomes is that some of todays amateurs will be tomorrow's professionals and the habits and practices developed in early days are not lightly given up.

[Colin Southern]

Well Glenn, more than one company has woken up to a very bad day now and again, thanks to the Internet:

"NEW YORK/BOSTON (Reuters) - In one of the biggest ever bank heists, a global cyber crime ring stole $45 million from two Middle Eastern banks by hacking into credit card processing firms and withdrawing money from ATMs in 27 countries, U.S. prosecutors said on Thursday.

"In the place of guns and masks, this cyber crime organization used laptops and the Internet," U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Loretta Lynch said at a news conference. "Moving as swiftly as data over the Internet, the organization worked its way from the computer systems of international corporations to the streets of New York City."

"The case demonstrates the major threat that cyber crime poses to banks around the world. It also shows how increasingly international and sophisticated criminal gangs have become, particularly those using the Internet.

"Prosecutors highlighted the "surgical precision" of these hackers, the global nature of their organization, and the speed and coordination with which they executed operations in 27 countries.

"Cyber experts said they believe the operation likely required the work of several hundred people, at least several of whom were highly skilled hackers capable of devising ways to penetrate well-protected financial systems.

"Hackers only need to find one vulnerability to cause millions of dollars of damage," said Mark Rasch, a former federal cyber crimes prosecutor, based in Bethesda, Maryland.

"An investigation is ongoing to see if other cells are operating in the country, Lynch said, adding that U.S. law enforcement had worked with counterparts in Japan, Canada, Germany, Romania, the United Arab Emirates, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Italy, Spain, Belgium, France, United Kingdom, Latvia, Estonia, Thailand, and Malaysia to uncover the ring."

But don't worry folks the Internet is perfectly safe, it's a perfectly safe place.

So what do you suggest they do John, shut down the internet immediately?

[Simon Garrett]

Colin, we're not going to agree on this! Largely I explained where the prices I quoted came from.

Last time I upgraded (to CS5) the upgrade price was the same for any of the last 3 versions, and was around £190. The upgrade to CS6 was about the same price. At an upgrade interval of 18 months, upgrading every 3 releases, that works out at £3.50 per month. Of course one has to purchase Photohop in the first place, but thereafter it costs - or used to cost - as little as £3.50 per month. If I upgraded every time it worked out at £10.55 per month. In future (after a one year deal for existing users) it will cost £17.58 per month.

I don't follow your logic about updates, but I stand by my view: if upgrades are more frequent, with the same number of developers, we still get the same number of features per unit time. But even if I accepted yor logic, it's still a price rise. Whether I want upgrades every year or not, I'm now having to pay for them.

If you've already bought Photoshop and written off (i.e. forgotten about) the cost, the combination of forcing upgrades every time and the new monthly price represents an increase in price - a considerable increase for some. No amount of rationalisation by Adobe or anyone else can alter that. It may be good value, it may be perfect sense, but it costs more. End of.

Furthermore, a CC user has no choice but to pay. With the CS model I always had the emotional safety net of knowing I didn't have to pay, and I could still use my exiting software. I always did pay (not every time), but I had the comfort factor of knowing I didn't have to.

That's an emotional judgement. But remember I'm talking about amateur, leisure users. You can't apply an accountant's logic to show it's great value. It simply costs more, and you have no choice.

I think this is the important difference. Leisure users talk about value and investment, but actually they pay money to make them feel good. And that's what it comes down to for leisure users: can I afford it, and will it make me feel good? And in the case of CC: yes I probably can and no it doesn't.

If you try to rationalise away the (real, definite) price rise for most amateur users by talking about "value", you're missing the point.

[Colin Southern]

There are one or two PS tools that I will miss but not enough to allow myself to be blackmailed for.

Blackmailed for? Are you serious?

I'm not sure of the definition of blackmail in your part of the world, but over here it's:

From s 237 of the Crimes Act:

Blackmail

(1) Every one commits blackmail who threatens, expressly or by implication, to make any accusation against any person (whether living or dead), to disclose something about any person (whether living or dead), or to cause serious damage to property or endanger the safety of any person with intent—

(a) to cause the person to whom the threat is made to act in accordance with the will of the person making the threat; and

(b) to obtain any benefit or to cause loss to any other person.

(2) Every one who acts in the manner described in subsection (1) is guilty of blackmail, even though that person believes that he or she is entitled to the benefit or to cause the loss, unless the making of the threat is, in the circumstances, a reasonable and proper means for effecting his or her purpose.

(3) In this section and in section 239, benefit means any benefit, pecuniary advantage, privilege, property, service, or valuable consideration.]

How are you being threatened?

For goodness sake, all they've done is replaced an up-front fee for a perpetual licence that excluded updates with one that requires a small monthly payment and entitles the user to continuous updates. They've continued to make their #1 program that's written for non-professionals (Lightroom) available for purchase if the user wishes, and they've continued to make the current revision of Photoshop available for purchase (for now anyway).

For heaven sake, do the math for new entrants to Photoshop (without the existing user discount) you'd be looking at subscribing for a month short of THREE YEARS to equal the up-front cost - and by then you'd be at least 2 revisions behind - so you'd need to stump up even more money up front to pay for revisions (which would pay a subscription for even longer). For existing users they've cut the fees in half as well. Some people will pay less, some people will pay more -- I suspect that in most cases the difference will be minimal (and absolutely trivial).

And for adopting the same subscription-based structure that's also used by many professional photographers - Google - Microsoft - Kelby Training - Experts Exchange - MediaFire - Dropbox - and a zillion other businesses - they're now "blackmailers".

Holy heck man - sorry, that's just gone from the sublime to the ridiculous.

[Colin Southern]

Colin, we're not going to agree on this! Largely I explained where the prices I quoted came from.

Last time I upgraded (to CS5) the upgrade price was the same for any of the last 3 versions, and was around £190. The upgrade to CS6 was about the same price. At an upgrade interval of 18 months, upgrading every 3 releases, that works out at £3.50 per month. Of course one has to purchase Photohop in the first place, but thereafter it costs - or used to cost - as little as £3.50 per month. If I upgraded every time it worked out at £10.55 per month. In future (after a one year deal for existing users) it will cost £17.58 per month.

Yes, but, if you're going to compare apples with apples, you can't just forget about the initial purchase price. And - as you yourself mentioned - the ability to skip a number of versions between upgrades was long gone by the time CS6 appeared - so why bring that into the rationale?

I don't follow your logic about updates, but I stand by my view: if upgrades are more frequent, with the same number of developers, we still get the same number of features per unit time. But even if I accepted yor logic, it's still a price rise. Whether I want upgrades every year or not, I'm now having to pay for them.

I'm afraid that's illogic; Adobe have stated that one of the main reasons for doing this is so that they can move into the benefits of cloud networking (eg being able to edit RAW images on your iPad and have those changes automatically reflected on the same images stored on your PC) but not have to suffer the burden of co-developing & supporting two products (eg Photoshop CC and Photoshop CS). So moving forward with just the one version means that they have less overhead. And who knows, if subscription model is more financially successful for them, then that may well give them more funds to re-invest in accelerating the development.

If you've already bought Photoshop and written off (i.e. forgotten about) the cost, the combination of forcing upgrades every time and the new monthly price represents an increase in price - a considerable increase for some. No amount of rationalisation by Adobe or anyone else can alter that. It may be good value, it may be perfect sense, but it costs more. End of.

I disagree. If you've already bought Photoshop - and don't need the "forced" upgrades that come with the subscription then you don't need the same "voluntary" upgrades that have traditionally been made available. So stick with what you have and you need not spend a cent. What is going to be so compellingly necessary for your workflow that you can't accomplish it with the still for sale with a perpetual licence CS6?

Furthermore, a CC user has no choice but to pay. With the CS model I always had the emotional safety net of knowing I didn't have to pay, and I could still use my exiting software. I always did pay (not every time), but I had the comfort factor of knowing I didn't have to.

They DO have a choice whether to pay or not - it's simply a case of do they still want to keep using the product or not? Why is that any different to me paying a landlord each week or the payment I make to Google for cloud storage every month or the payment I make to Apple to rent a movie? Should I flatly refuse to go see the new Star Trek movie tomorrow because the darn blackmailers will only rent me a seat for around $7.50 an hour instead of letting buy the movie theatre? No - I'm quite happy to rent a seat in a movie theatre - I'm quite happy to pay Google for cloud storage - I'm quite happy to pay the landlord to rent a house - and I'm quite happy to pay Adobe for a licence to use their great software. To be honest, the licencing change came as a surprise to me too, but unlike many it seems, I've taken a moment to consider what the software is worth to me - what they're asking in return - listened to their rationale for changing it - and thought to myself "hey, it's just not a big deal". I'm sure if all those who have gone to such lengths to bellyache about it on the net had instead put that time into a bit of overtime, they'd probably have enough to pay for their first couple of year subscription!

That's an emotional judgement. But remember I'm talking about amateur, leisure users. You can't apply an accountant's logic to show it's great value. It simply costs more, and you have no choice.

You have plenty of choice; if you don't think it represents sufficient value for money for you then don't sign up for it. Frankly, all I'm hearing is a lot of whining from people whjo want to have their cake and eat it too.

I think this is the important difference. Leisure users talk about value and investment, but actually they pay money to make them feel good. And that's what it comes down to for leisure users: can I afford it, and will it make me feel good? And in the case of CC: yes I probably can and no it doesn't.

If you try to rationalise away the (real, definite) price rise for most amateur users by talking about "value", you're missing the point.

Yes - it's software that DOES make you feel good about being able to achieve things that may be very difficult (or even impossible) to do with other tools. This is the bit I just don't get; folks don't bat an eyelid about spending many times the cost of a CC subscription on things that don't bring anywhere near the pleasure. We're talking - worst case - 66c a day for goodness sake - how many people spend 5 or 10 times that amount on a cup or two of coffee because they're too lazy to make it themselves? Or far more than that on credit card interest (from full-product purchases perhaps -- there's an interesting dynamic to add to the cost of ownership) - they waste it on junk food - they waste it on any one of a number of things - and yet when they're offered something like this that I think represents INCREDIBLE value considering what it can do people want to burn them at the stake?

Crazy thinking.

[Adrian]

John, whilst hackers do indeed try to steal money and intellectual property, I think it is a bit unlikely that they are going to make a major effort to snaffle your photos. And given that this move by Adobe does not involve your data storage in the cloud, cyber attacks are not relevant anyway.

All that a cloud is really is data stored (or backed up to) a different location than your computer. The server is firmly on the ground. Probably in an anonymous air conditioned warehouse guarded by men in uniform. All that is happening is that data is transferred from her to there via the internet. You can keep as many home copies of it as you like as well. So called cloud computing is really no big deal. We still have to take responsibility for protecting our own data. Cloud is good. Cheap, fast convenient, accessible wherever you are. But a good local backup is still smart as well.

Wayland, if I attended a course and the lecturer started telling me about blackmailing tactics of Adobe as a result of this policy frankly I would laugh. This is just commerce. Not blackmail. Free markets mean competitors can enter the arena if they want. Anyone can use who they like. All choices of this nature involve compromises.

Adrian

[Colin Southern]

John, whilst hackers do indeed try to steal money and intellectual property, I think it is a bit unlikely that they are going to make a major effort to snaffle your photos. And given that this move by Adobe does not involve your data storage in the cloud, cyber attacks are not relevant anyway.

I might add that there's a saying in aviation "how do you improve aviation safety?" and the answer is "one accident at a time".

Crimes like that are annoying, but ultimately, all we can do is learn from them and move on; to not repeat the same mistake twice. There is risk with anything in life, but we need to apply a little logic and less emotion in assessing it (or we may just as well forget about air travel - or car travel - or boat travel for that matter). In the real world sometimes the bad guys win (but that's not to say they won't get caught). $45M is an amount I'd sure like to have in my account, but in the grand scheme of things, it's a pretty paltry amount for a bank -- even our paltry-in-comparison make around $1,000,000 dollars profit a day.

In John's case, the risk of temporarily connecting a PC to the internet to download & install Photoshop from Adobe (and once a month to re-activate it) would be immeasurably small.

[pnodrog]

John, whilst hackers do indeed try to steal money and intellectual property, I think it is a bit unlikely that they are going to make a major effort to snaffle your photos. And given that this move by Adobe does not involve your data storage in the cloud, cyber attacks are not relevant anyway.

All that a cloud is really is data stored (or backed up to) a different location than your computer. The server is firmly on the ground. Probably in an anonymous air conditioned warehouse guarded by men in uniform. All that is happening is that data is transferred from her to there via the internet. You can keep as many home copies of it as you like as well. So called cloud computing is really no big deal. We still have to take responsibility for protecting our own data. Cloud is good. Cheap, fast convenient, accessible wherever you are. But a good local backup is still smart as well.

Wayland, if I attended a course and the lecturer started telling me about blackmailing tactics of Adobe as a result of this policy frankly I would laugh. This is just commerce. Not blackmail. Free markets mean competitors can enter the arena if they want. Anyone can use who they like. All choices of this nature involve compromises.

Adrian

The intellectual is Adobe's and they are the ones that will suffer if the registration update algorithm gets hacked. Maybe we will find a hacker offering a $2 a month service.

Cloud computing and cloud storage are related but very different and for me cloud computing is really a big deal that I will avoid whenever possible. I always like to have access to both my data and it's processing and not be dependant on the continuous availability or performance of a communications link.

However at least Adobe do provide the programmes to run on their clients computers (not cloud computing). So from a technical point of view I have no reservations. From a financial point of view for many of us it does not make sense. The benefits simply do not warrant the cost. It is totally different proposition if it relates to an income source and when maximising productivity is important.