Thursday 27 January 2011

Excellent investment

I had one of those "excellent investment" calls today. You probably know the routine. An excited young man calls you at home unsolicited and totally out of the blue to offer you the opportunity to make well above average returns for your money. Of course it will involve investing about £10,000 and you have to make a decision soon or you'll lose the opportunity.  This time the marvellous opportunity was in real estate in Natal in Brazil. I won't bore you with the detail, but his arguments soon started to fall apart when I probed a bit.

Sadly for him I wasn't busy at the time. I kept him talking for an hour before he realised he was going to get nowhere. By the time the call ended he realised my scheme for investing in Natural Colour Diamonds would be far more profitable for his money.

ps I wonder why women never make these calls.

Saturday 22 January 2011

Software Price Rip-off - Adobe

The major software companies moan about "pirates" copying/using their software without paying for it. There are  of course other organisations who charge unfairly for software. The current ex-tax software prices for Adobe software products are a case in point.

If I download Adobe's InDesign CS5 while sitting in USA/Canada the price will be $699 US; however if I perform the same download from the UK the price will be $952 US. This 36% uplift on price is totally unacceptable. It is also bad business practice for Adobe. They'd actually get more business from me if they priced their products fairly.

Alaric