Susanne,
>let me add a somewhat different view to this debate.
Personally, I was just dreaming, not trying to open a debate or place a
complaint.
>I do not think that US$ 250 is too high of a price.
No, in itself, it's not. But for some of the poorer students who would get
most out of QDA but don't have the necessary knowledge to make this kind of
investment, this price tag, combined with all the other factors mentioned
before, make most QDA software rebarbative.
Note that my message really wasn't a complaint to QDA company. Yes, we all
understand that they're usually small. And so were most computer companies
a few years ago.
There is no reason for QDA not to become very important as it can be useful
for so many people. If simple basic tools were available, cross-platform,
with file-compatibility with complete packages, maybe QDA could be as
easily justified in college curriculum or even in market research as
statistical analysis.
>Why don't we try to better advocate QDA packages in our universities so that
>they buy it for the computer labs?
Exactly. One way to do it is to show how pervasive it can become. This is
where a student version can help. Otherwise, with many university
administrations, it can be extremely hard to convince anyone.
Actually, even at universities that do have QDA packages in their labs, the
QDA advocacy can be pityful. Which means that expensive software
(especially if they don't have site licenses, 40000 copies of a $250
package really *is* expensive) is underused which makes further purchases
or upgrades extremely hard to justify.
>Overall. I do not think that QDA packages are priced too high.
No, they're not. But some of us do dream about a simple, easy-to-use,
cross-platform, file compatible, inexpensive tool to help QDA become more
prominent in our training as students.
>There are also some demo versions that let you work with small sets of data
>files.
Good. That might actually be the solution we're talking about. It's hard to
know this off-hand. Could you tell us about those?
Thank you very much for your help and sorry if some comments looked like
complaints or a debate.
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