Re: "Regarding ads"
Ads/Publicity should be kept for the Trial Version. The problem here is, that there is no real Trial Version as it's only a one-time trial. So people would see the ads only once during their trial.
To counter that, they've put the ads/publicity in the paid version. I fail to see the strategem behind that reasoning. It's all relativity here.
People would use the Trial Version over and over. That'd makes them see the ads endlessly until they bought the Advanced Version. Because between you and me, the Basic Version is kind of a joke as it has the same functionalities 3DMark06 Trial Version has.
Since most people (assumption) buy 3DMark06 with a credit card, there's a small margin of the sale that goes to Visa-MasterCard or whatever credit company you card is from. Add to that the cost of the customer support staff, which I admit might not come into play since they probably haven't hired people just for Vantage, but then again, since it's a new launch, the staff might have bigger work shift (assumption) and add to that the fact that there seems to be some problems with keys and people wanting refunds for those.
In the end, I really wonder if making people pay to have the same functionalities as a preceding benchmark is a good idea. And to those who want even more out of the program, the fact that you let the ads/publicity when they paid you to show their support makes these people feel that you are more interested in showing them your partners for the additional revenues than you are in them having a product they'd be proud of.
I know that since 3DMarkVantage is a Direct10X Vista Exclusive Benchmark, there were additional costs and that in the end, you're like all the businesses out there, you're here to make money. But you have to think that if you have companies that buy the professionnal edition, it's because they think that a lot more people out there are going to stand by Vantage in term of Benchmarking.
All in all, I strongly question the viability of the mindset concerning ads/publicity and the removal of the Unlimited Trial Version. I guess the two following paragraphs, which were taken from Tom's Hardware, resume best the situation that is currently going on over the community.
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"This new pricing policy is surprising, and seems fairly dangerous for Futuremark (popular support for 3DMark from users is still indispensable to their image). The company explains, touchingly, that creating a new benchmark for Windows Vista generated an additional workload that required them to hire new programmers, boost maintenance for the Website and add new analysis tools. We should mention that not only do users pay for 3DMark, but so do all component makers who don’t want to look ridiculous when the new version comes out (in fact, they’re all members of the program).
The bottom line is that there isn’t much that’s really new in this new version of 3DMark, which looks very much like the previous versions, but with additional limitations (no free version and a single overall score, and the addition of the Presets, which will probably make comparisons more difficult). So we don’t see any more reason than we ever had to include it in our graphics-card test series, given its fundamentally artificial nature."
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