Let me first say that I appreciate you taking the time to provide feedback on these issues. It's not easy to go on-line and put together a well-thought out critique on something and publicly post it knowing that advocates of that something are likely to be aggressive in their response. I'd like to personally address the issues you raise as best I can.
In my opinion, Stardock's out of control on the Premium Dream pricing scheme. The real reason this site is hot is because of the free submissions made by aspiring artists who frequent this site like TheMasterBaron, AzDude and others who have really brought Stardock's Dream Site area all of the hype it has and have also saved Microsoft's butts.
I can't really say whether the free submissions are the "real reason" people come here. However, the existence of premium content does not in any way take away from their efforts. One might argue that premium content is the best-type of context-sensitive advertising (for instance). Rather than seeing a "punch the monkey" ad, you instead see a Master skin in which users can choose to purchase if they want. If they don't want to purchase, that's their right too. As for what's popular, 4 of the 10 most popular Dreams on WinCustomize.com were created by Stardock Design -- for free.
Stardock's Premium Dreams have had little impact on the overall success of Dreamscene's, if anything Stardock and Microsoft are riding the coattails of all of Stardock's free submitters. Also realize that if the free users stopped submitting, Stardock would be dead in the water on Dreamscenes. Stardock shouldn't have any premium Dreamscenes, they should be free contributions for all the hits and revenue their users produce.
I can't say whether Premium Dreams have had a lot or little success on DreamScenes. To me, it's largely irrelevant since Premium Dreams don't exist to help DreamScenes but rather to benefit from the demand for Dreams in the first place. The existence of commercial software, for instance, does no harm to the existence of freeware. If anything, premium content gives an incentive for people to appreciate free content even more. That said, the revenue that pays for the development of DeskScapes (which is what makes dynamic content possible in the first place as well as pays for the creation of the free Dreams Stardock Design creates -- which I mention again has nearly half of the top 10 most popular slots) comes from the sale of premium Dreams.
They can charge for Object Desktop, Windowsblinds and the rest of their 100+ other products they have for sale on their site. Just to add, my opinion on why Stardock is charging is because Microsoft made things much harder for Stardock with Vista. In the XP days, Stardock brought Vista-like interface changes to the table. In that era, Stardock cornered the market on GUI customization. Today, things aren't so rosy. Vista performs many of Stardock's Object Desktop features natively, leaving Stardock to find new ways to make money. Understand Stardock's days are numbered in the GUI customiztion business. As OS's get prettier with age like Vista and MacOS, Stardock's software can now be considered "bloatware" and a waste of precious RAM and processor time.
There's a lot of erroneous statements in what you say above. First off, I am not aware of a single feature of Object Desktop that is in Windows Vista. Can you name these features that Windows Vista has that are new over Windows XP in terms of customization? If anything, Windows Vista is a step back from Windows XP in this area. In Windows Vista, you can't even change folder icons anymore for live folders in the OS (you could change folder icons on Windows XP). Moreover, on Windows XP, users could patch uxtheme.dll and use a skin editor to create new styles for Windows XP. On Windows Vista, you can't. The most you can do is replace bitmap resources. I do agree that Windows Vista is prettier than Windows XP. But that has nothing to do with Object Desktop or why people purchase it. Object Desktop and WindowBlinds sales have continually climbed over the years. Windows Vista users are disproportionately represented on new purchases (15% of Object Desktop purchases are by Windows Vista users compared to 8% of the general public that uses Windows).
The other primary mistake you make has to do with what you consider "bloatware". WindowBlinds, for instance, not only is faster than Aero, but it vastly reduces the power consumption. On a typical laptop that gets 4 hours on a single charge, running WindowBlinds instead of Aero will provide you with approximately 45 more minutes of battery life. That's pretty significant. Even if you just used WindowBlinds on Windows Vista with an Aero skin, you would see faster performance and longer battery life. This strikes me as quite the opposite of "bloatware".
The final problem with your argument is that if Stardock is indeed doomed by Windows Vista, does that not make the case that Stardock should be more aggressive in charging users for Dreams as well as charging users for the use of its other services? Also, if Windows customization is doomed, wouldn't traffic be going down? According to Google Analytics, traffic to WinCustomize.com is up around 10% over this same period last year. Which, if you think about it, is pretty amazing since that was the peek of the pre-Vista hype (i.e. maximum demand for people wanting to skin Windows to look like Vista and such last year).
Also, isn't Stardock getting any Microsoft kickbacks being that Dreamscenes and Deskscapes/Dreammaker are collaborative efforts as they work into one another, I mean Stardock has bailed Microsoft out on what would have been a pathetic release with only 10+ dreams available from Microsoft when Stardock currently brought over 200 more Dreams to the table?
Microsoft doesn't pay Stardock anything. Similarly, AOL doesn't pay us anything to support Winamp. Moreover, Stardock hasn't brought 200 Dreams to the table, individual artists through their hard work have brought 200 dreams to the table.
Finally, if you purchase any of these Premium Dreams, you'll have to activate this product, a little overboard for a $10 wallpaper.
Why should you care if you activate a $10 wallpaper? The benefit is that activation makes it much easier for users to re-download in the future -- a key thing for people who make on-line purchases.
Even better, if your system should fail and you are reinstalling Windows and you don't take backup images like a friend of mine who purchased one, then chances are your going to have to call/e-mail Stardock to reactivate your Premium Dream as this activation is paying attention to your SID's when activated to prevent piracy so a reinstall or sysprep would force reactivation, yuck!
This is completely untrue.
Saddest part, after the paying customer has all these hoops to jump through, I can guarantee crackers have already infiltrated the activation so in the end the guy paying the $10 feels like, um..........
Anti-piracy is only a relatively small part of what activation is about. The primary part of it is to ensure that each user is in the system so that they can easily re-download in the future (hence your argument that you have to call Stardock to reactivate is nonsensical).
Hopefully, Stardock's work in the GUI business will not be in vain, leading to a buyout or takeover by Microsoft being that your GUI enhancement's have influenced Vista greatly. In the end Stardock could take over the GUI development portion of the next Windows OS after Vista, which would buy Stardock more time in the game. Some may say it's crazy, but look at the Winternals acquisition. Winternals showed Microsoft how to use System Restore and make it work. They also introduced Microsoft as well as BartPE, UBCD and Reatogo to the bootable Windows environment, which changed the face of Vista as alot of Winternals ERCD's features are integrated into Vista's install DVD. Business constantly changes and evolves, eventually Stardock's position in the market will change drastically, hopefully for the better!!
Stardock has no intention of being bought out by Microsoft or anyone else. As a company that has been around over a decade, had we wanted to be bought out, we would have been bought out by now. The trends in windows customization is pretty positive overall -- from Stardock's point of view. As pretty as Windows Vista seems today people once felt the same way about Windows XP. If you do Google searches, you can no doubt find plenty of posts in which people said the same thing about Windows XP and how it would doom Stardock. When something is new and fresh, one thinks they will never get tired of it. But history has shown that what seems new and fresh today gets pretty stale. Moreover, customization is about personalizing ones environment. I don't care how good looking a given car design is (for instance). I certainly wouldn't want my car to look exactly the same as everyone else's car.
Thanks again for your time.
