Maybe I'm the only one who has a gripe, but its my feeling that you just don't get much for your money when you are buying appraisal software anymore.  A simple program that fills out forms for $ 1,000 or more doesn't seem to me to be a deal. 

I paid $ 500 for Report Builder some time ago, its a commercial narrative appraisal report program, and it was so complicated that I never got it to work.  Then I paid the company again for an update with the promise that they would make it work and again it never happened.  I still get soliciations from the Report Builder company wanting me to buy in again, they are probably under new ownership and there is always a new update, but there are only so many times that I am willing to pay for a software program an receive no benefit from it. 

My latest a la mode purchase of WinTotal 2011 (see News) has turned out to be a fiasco.  The program worked for a while, now it won't work at all.  Its a new low on the part of a software company (a la mode, Inc.) to demand that I have a "membership" in order to get the software that I purchased to work.  Its not like I am an advanced residential forms user with all kinds of problems, demands and multiple users.  I am one guy who fills out a form now and again.  My focus is commercial narratives.

I don't know if the "membership" thing is new, but I would appreciate the honesty of being told that a company will abandon their product (regardless of the fact that it is new) if you don't continue to pay them.  I guess that honesty might hurt their bottom line.