Other Software > Found Deals and Discounts

Database Oasis for $21 on Bits duJour Wed, 4/14/2010

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J-Mac:
Sorry about resurrecting this thread but Database Oasis Professional Version was offered at BDJ on Thursday, December 9, 2010 (yesterday) with some unusual circumstances IMO. As posted above I purchased the Basic version of Database Oasis at BDJ in April. The Professional version wasn’t offered at that time. BTW, the term "Professional" as used in this case is a bit misleading as is often the case with software. Some developers try to separate home/personal usage from business/enterprise usage to distinguish Basic from Pro versions of their software. However many just hold back some key features from Basic versions in what I suspect is a ploy to push the more expensive Pro versions to personal users as well as SOHO users. Database Oasis takes this concept to another level! Their Basic and Pro versions are pretty much identical except for a very few features which are in the Pro version only, like filtering by more than one term, the ability to link files to DB records, and a report writer. Other than that they are the same, except for the price: $69.99 for Basic and $119.99 for Pro. I purchased the Basic version in April at the BDJ discounted price of $21.00; great deal! Till I realized that there is no report feature at all in Basic. Look at your data but no reports. Blah! You can print screens and basic list of records but that's it. WTF.

Now the Pro version was on sale at BDJ yesterday for $36.00, which is a lot cheaper than $119.99! And that's even less than the usual upgrade price from Basic to Pro of $50.00! But...

..... it seems that someone noticed that their current Pro version is at 2.97 so might a new major version be on the near horizon? Of course, which is fairly common for really big discounts at BDJ. But in this case I discovered that the major upgrade will be released in January 2011 - just a couple of weeks away. And due to the upgrade the price will be increased. After some coaxing the Database Oasis rep said that they don’t usually offer discounts for the Pro version but the reason for the BDJ discount offer was specifically because of the short remaining life of the current version (yeah, like less than a month!) and no upgrade pricing is available yet. Whatever deals are usually offered to customers who purchased the software in the last 30 or 60 or 90 days - whatever their policy normally is for recent purchases - the BDJ purchasers yesterday would not be eligible.

What a deal, huh? Here's the link to the BDJ page with the Comments section that contains a good bit of the back and forth about upgrades and pricing: http://www.bitsdujour.com/software/database-oasis-professional/#comments . I don’t know; maybe I'm just becoming more jaded in my golden years but this really seems to suck. Just thought I would throw this out there for anyone considering Database Oasis. I'm not saying not to buy it, but just be aware of the sort of pricing games they play.

Jim

budgall:
I also was part of that conversation and like you I also decided to pass on the upgrade. I wonder how many copies they sold on the 9th. I bet they would have sold a lot more copies if they had been more up front with the new version release and added upgrade path to anyone who took the offer. I found it hard to believe they have not determined the new pricing yet. The release is only weeks away. I most likely would have purchased if I knew what the cost of the upgrade to 3.0 was going to be.

J-Mac:
Same here. I want the report writer capabilities because currently I can't print reports from my databases - which is just plain stupid. Since when if printing reports a Pro-only type feature?! But I'm not going to pay to upgrade the same software twice within a month.

Thanks!

Jim

J-Mac:
Sorry to necromance this thread but the post history within is necessary IMO.

Just wanted to comment that even though I don’t really use my copy of DB Oasis "Standard", I check every few months to see if any development has taken place. Supposedly they were releasing a major upgrade in January 2011 but excluding all Bits purchasers from December 2010 - about three weeks earlier - from being able to upgrade. Well as of right now they have never released ANY kind of update, upgrade or anything at all. Appears to be "abandonware" at this point.

Jim

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