All-Night Store
Broadband makes it feasible for people to download large programs that they would never have dreamed of obtaining over a dial-up connection. And as more software becomes available electronically, more customers are forgoing discs. Even Microsoft is climbing aboard the download wagon, with a trial download program for its new 2007 Office software suite. Adobe now sells its entire line of content creation software electronically, and though the company won't disclose what percentage of its sales are downloads, that business is definitely growing, says Mark Floisand, the company's director of worldwide direct commerce. Meanwhile, 45 percent of customers who buy an edition of Intuit's QuickBooks at QuickBooks.com download it, says Heidi Jackman, group marketing manager for its site. And at about 430MB, QuickBooks isn't a trivial download: Intuit estimates a download time ranging from 20 to 45 minutes over broadband. Adobe's Creative Suite, meanwhile, requires more than 5GB of hard drive space, so it's a very lengthy download even with a broadband connection. With files this big, you might want to use a download manager (if the software maker's store allows you to) that will let you resume the transfer without starting over if, say, your Internet connection drops. For this purpose, my colleague Erik Larkin recommends LeechGet, a free utility that works with all the major Internet browsers.
Many shrink-wrapped Adobe packages come with hefty printed manuals. But if you buy the software as a download, you'll get the manual only in electronic form (as a PDF). Adobe is willing to send download buyers the printed manual, but at a cost of $35 to $50 for something that buyers of the shrink-wrapped product get for free. In this case, I'd defer the instant gratification and instead go for the box with the discs and the manual.
If you want both the convenience of downloading and the insurance of having physical media on your shelf, you may be able to purchase backup installation discs. Intuit charges about $10 to cover shipping and handling; and Adobe charges between $10 and $20, depending on how many discs the product requires.
Ad Choices