Synergy, buy it for "life"

[Arika]

so...wait, why are people annoyed?

 

if you bought synergy 1 with a "lifetime key" it will still work even when 2 is released, it's not like they are discontinuing the service. and like the others have said, buying one product does not give you free access to the next iteration of it, that's just stupid and selfish.

[randomuserXYZ]

I just went back to Feb 2015 when I bought my Lifetime licence:

https://web.archive.org/web/20150206053837/https://synergy-project.org/purchase/faq/

 

Citation:

"Will I need to buy again for every new version?

No, you won't need to keep buying, you have lifetime access."

 

I have to disagree with some of you. I bought access to a certain software, including lifetime updates. Citation: "every new version". Now they claim the new version or the update is a new product. Thats like buying a Donut-Lifetime-Flatrate and after 1 year when they run out of money, they call it Donut 2.0 and unfortunately all Donuts 1.0 are now moldy and claim that you bought Donut 1.0.

 

The other comparisons just suck. I did not bought Windows XP and want to have access to Vista, I bought Windows Life Time. That means All Versions. I did not bought Office 2003, but Office. Not Oblivion and want to have Skyrim, but all Elders Scrolls games. 

 

If they promise such a shit, than they should deliver it do those customers. Everything else is lying or do NOT promise Lifetime access. If the company runs out of money - fine, stop the support or found a new company!

 

I can not recommend to buy any more products from them, neither should linustechtips.

[SlipperyPete]

1 hour ago, randomuserXYZ said:

I have to disagree with some of you. I bought access to a certain software, including lifetime updates. Citation: "every new version". Now they claim the new version or the update is a new product. Thats like buying a Donut-Lifetime-Flatrate and after 1 year when they run out of money, they call it Donut 2.0 and unfortunately all Donuts 1.0 are now moldy and claim that you bought Donut 1.0.

this example is just as shitty as the others. 

lets consider donuts 1.0 to be , admittedly, good donuts

so donuts 2.0 are like the original donuts but better.

just because donuts 2.0 exists doesnt make 1.0 "Moldy"

 

my second point:

lifetime updates doesnt mean your lifetime. it means lifetime of the product version

[LAwLz]

I am not sure if I think it's funny or sad that I wrote this post in an attempt to be sarcastic, but apparently people are actually saying the same things and being 100% serious about it:

On 2017-11-17 at 9:16 PM, LAwLz said:

"Technically Symless has done nothing wrong. What you were promised was lifetime access to Synergy Pro, but this is Synergy 2 Pro. Clearly they are two separate things and if you were fooled then you only have yourself to blame. Synergy is a business so they need to make money to feed their families. If you don't like it then stop using their program and stop complaining like a bitch". 

(By the way, I believe everything I wrote above here is bullshit) 

 

It's pretty amazing how far people will suck corporations' dicks and blame themselves when they get treated like dirt. No wonder the world is going to shit. Everyone is busy being spineless cowards who does mental gymnastics to justify being fucked in the ass.

 

 

And as I have said in the other threads, Synergy is open source under the GPL. If you don't want to pay for it feel free to download the source code (or a pre-compiled version) and use that if you want. It is 100% legal and will not cost you 0 cent.

Here are installers for versions up to 1.8.8.

 

 

Also, fuck Linus for not standing up for his viewers and instead siding with Synergy.

This is not at all like Teamviewer because TW is completely free for personal use, including all versions.

 

The arguments that it is not sustainable to sell a product at a one time cost and updates are free is bullshit too for several reasons.

1) Synergy promised that future versions would be free too. They explicitly said you would not have to rebuy Synergy.

2) Teamviewer has a free tier which is on the latest version, and they are doing fine.

3) Yes you can. There are several successful companies who release free upgrades to their product which has a one-time fee. Just look at WinRAR as an example.

4) Not all companies has to be able to scale to multi-billion dollar companies. You shouldn't make every decision based on how much profit you can make. When did everyone become so greedy and selfish? "They need to make money" shouldn't be an excuse to lie, deceive and disappoint your customers. 

[randomuserXYZ]

2 hours ago, SlipperyPete said:

this example is just as shitty as the others. 

lets consider donuts 1.0 to be , admittedly, good donuts

so donuts 2.0 are like the original donuts but better.

just because donuts 2.0 exists doesnt make 1.0 "Moldy"

 

my second point:

lifetime updates doesnt mean your lifetime. it means lifetime of the product version.

no, synergy 1 will probably run into bugs in future windows versions for example. and even in the current version are still bugs present which come out just by time. They promised updates to keep synergy "fresh" and "good donuts", now it will become "moldy". 

 

your second point: no, literally they promised lifetime for ALL VERSIONS. Citation: "every new version" ... 

 

Whats so hard to understand that they fuck up with every old customer just to earn more profit? 

[SlipperyPete]

7 hours ago, randomuserXYZ said:

no, synergy 1 will probably run into bugs in future windows versions for example. and even in the current version are still bugs present which come out just by time. They promised updates to keep synergy "fresh" and "good donuts", now it will become "moldy". 

thats an assumption that they will stop releasing bug fixes. they never said they would stop doing that so thats an unfair assumption.

this is a business. business need a sustainable model to s=keep their doors open. to keep a sustainable model yu need to do one of two things, continually sell products, or collect payments over a period of time (a subscription)

[AtomicFrance]

Asking your customers to pay for a product that barely achieves what I would consider beta-level stability with zero support unless you're a dev willing to put in work on their project for free is a shitty way to do business IMO. 
 

I would just shoot them an email asking for the upgrade per the expectation set at the time of purchase. If they say no, throw everyone at Symless you can get an email address for on the cc line and demand they either uphold the terms of the original purchase or you'll be forced to take legal action. Make enough noise and chances are they'll make it right just to make you go away and avoid a legal battle over a few bucks.

It's petty, but so is asking for people to pay twice for a product.

[hands]

I think what they did is misleading to say the least, but more accurately it's trickery. I bought synergy a few months ago. I was excited when I heard about the updates to my product that I was supposed to get lifetime updates for, only to be disappointed.  Synergy "2" is still synergy.  It's a program that shares your keyboard and mouse over multiple computers. It is an update because it does nothing new.

 

Since everyone is doing analogies. It's like getting a lifetime pasta pass at Olive Garden only to have them change their name to Olive Garden 2 the week after you buy it. Then they say to you "Sorry that's only good at Olive Garden"

 

Definitely not a new product.

Definitely not giving them any more money.

At least I helped out Linus by using his promo code.

I didn't need those fancy new features anyway.

[hands]

23 hours ago, SlipperyPete said:

thats an assumption that they will stop releasing bug fixes. they never said they would stop doing that so thats an unfair assumption.

this is a business. business need a sustainable model to s=keep their doors open. to keep a sustainable model yu need to do one of two things, continually sell products, or collect payments over a period of time (a subscription)

The typical way to keep selling products is to keep making new products. Not selling lifetime updates and then charging for the first real update.

[randomuserXYZ]

22 hours ago, cpenchoen said:

I would just shoot them an email asking for the upgrade per the expectation set at the time of purchase. If they say no, throw everyone at Symless you can get an email address for on the cc line and demand they either uphold the terms of the original purchase or you'll be forced to take legal action. Make enough noise and chances are they'll make it right just to make you go away and avoid a legal battle over a few bucks.

That's what I did yesterday - not to everyone in CC but a very "nice" email (+youtube comments, ...). I paid for Synergy Pro, now I got synergy 2 pro for free. At least. Still a very strange and unfair business model.  

[randomuserXYZ]

On 11/21/2017 at 8:18 PM, SlipperyPete said:

thats an assumption that they will stop releasing bug fixes. they never said they would stop doing that so thats an unfair assumption.

this is a business. business need a sustainable model to s=keep their doors open. to keep a sustainable model yu need to do one of two things, continually sell products, or collect payments over a period of time (a subscription)

Of course this is an assumption, but do you seriously expect something else? I personally never experienced something else. I'm already happy if the latest version of a product gets bug fixes. 

 

I know how business works. I totally understand. BUT, if they chose a subscription model that obviously doesn't work, because they promised that they deliver lifetime for free, than that is not my problem. Either they go broke or they try to earn money with new customers. With new customers they should not do the same mistake again to promise lifetime free updates, but actually they do it again.  

[randomuserXYZ]

Just tested between Mac and Windows,... mixed impressions. Login via Browser, no configuration necessary - or possible! Just the Position of the screens can be changed. Worked over wifi and institut firewall - OK. Copy&Paste works. File-Drag&Drop never worked for me really, so with 2.0 not at all. Closing the MacBook with Monitor attached - Synergy doesn't accept mouse clicks anymore - but mouse pointer still worked. Opening the Lid, didn't helped. It runs 100% in the background, not even an icon on the taskbar/... so you can not do anything. By trying to kill it, i found out, it's immortal. 3 processes, but even if you kill all 3, there is still something left which opens every 3. Restarting the App in MacOs doesn't bring up the application anymore. Logout/Login and Mouseclicks are working again. Window still not showing up - but hey, it works in the background. Nice feature: there are no servers/clients anymore. Both directions are possible. 

 

Just seen: Many features are NOT included in version 2.0, but will come in 2.1. Like FileSharing, TaskbarIcon, ...

[SlipperyPete]

49 minutes ago, randomuserXYZ said:

Of course this is an assumption, but do you seriously expect something else? I personally never experienced something else. I'm already happy if the latest version of a product gets bug fixes. 

Microsoft is notorious for being shitty to people, yet the offer support for products that are two generations old and 8 years old.

 

im not expecting anything from them, i just think it is unfair to assume this.

[hands]

They upgraded me to synergy 2 free of charge. Just give them your email address. Still kinda shitty that they are banking on people buying it again without asking questions.