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Why is There a Cost for the Disk Edition?

Some of the people who express interest in the Disk Edition are turned off when they find out there is a cost associated with it, unlike the free version on the web site. This is understandable and certainly does not surprise me. Some people may be wondering why it makes sense to charge for the Disk Edition while the web site is free, and I can understand that as well, so I thought I would explain this briefly here.

Having a free version on the web and a Disk Edition with a cost associated with it is not incongruous. In fact, you see similar things all the time in related areas: one example is shareware software, where you can try a product and decide if you want to buy it or not. One way of looking at The PC Guide web site is a "shareware version" of the Disk Edition--you can read as much as you want for free, and if you like it enough to want to have it at your fingertips, you can license a copy for yourself. Another example is a library: you can try out and even read an entire book at the library, but you do have to buy a copy if you like the book enough that you want a copy for yourself. The World Wide Web is really in many ways like a gigantic world-wide library (with books that millions of people can read at the same time).

I am sure that most people will realize that writing The PC Guide took a tremendous amount of time and effort. Keeping the site current through the inevitable changes in technology is even more work, and in addition, I plan to increase the content of the site on a regular basis. This amounts to hundreds of hours of my time. I do this in part for the love of it, but I have also decided to devote myself full-time to the site, and therefore must support my family using the site, or discontinue it. (I’m certainly not getting rich from this, I assure you!) Purchasing the Disk Edition helps to support this work and to ensure that The PC Guide will be around for some time to come. Reading The PC Guide on the web also supports the site, through the revenue generated by my sponsors and through the other side benefits of being in a public place. However, having everyone just download the entire site to their hard disks would be the equivalent of a magazine that had no advertisements and no charge for subscription. It simply could not remain viable for very long.

One final reason for the cost is to discourage the wasting of bandwidth. The site is large, even in compressed form, and I want to limit downloads to those who are really going to use the material.

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