The new version - loss of function and arrogance run amok

Pros: Convenient Gnutella client (but then so is Limewire and Limewire's free)

Cons: As a paid user of the old version, I downloaded this version and tried it ... this is esentially a Gnutella client, now, and gets less than a fifth of the content that the old version did. FastTrack alone has over 6 times the content available on Gnutella.

Then I started getting alert messages urging me to register and pay for it. I saw no reason to 'upgrade' to a version that gives me less than 1/5th the functionality of the old version and certainly no reason to pay a second time for it. I was happy to keep using my old version until a better one came out. So I tried to do so.

Then my old version began alerting me, several times per hour, that there is a new version. This message interrupts anything else I am doing. To add insult to injury, now my old version has begun telling me, upon startup, that it has 'expired' and forcing me to quit the program.

This sofware is incomplete and should not have been released until it was at least as functional as the old one. That, in itself, is bad enough.

Even worse, this software is designed to behave in a coercive, disruptive manner, doing everything possible, up to and including forced quitting, to cram the new version down the throats of previous-version users. The user's choice to upgrade or not should be just that; a choice.

I still buy software (or at least license it); I don't 'subscribe' to programs and I don't expect them to 'expire' and become unusable every time the developer feels like making me pay for a new version. Especially a version that is much less useful than the old version. Even Microsoft isn't this arrogant and coercive.

I really liked X-Factor and the next version, when it is actually ready for public release, may well be a better one. But it's really a shame that it's being "marketed" in this way.

As for me, I'm going back to Limewire Pro. It has all of the functionality of the "new, improved" XFactor and doesn't browbeat, coerce and manipulate its users in the way that XFactor's developers are apparently willing to do.

Posted: 02-Mar-2006 12:39:04 PM