Good feedback. We do appreciate it. I joined the SlickEdit team during the v9 development cycle, so I can't comment on anything before that. Each year we try to make sure the release contains enough fixes and enhancements to justify the maintenance and support cost. We charge an industry standard 20% for that.
For $60 per year, this is the best way to make sure you are getting the latest updates and access to excellent customer support (yes, the product support team reports to me as well
). We believe this is a reasonable cost to stay current with the primary tool a developer uses to write code, even if you don't use product support. Only you can decide if that is true for your situation.
We do have to restrict access to product support to those who are paying for it. As you might imagine, there are costs associated with maintaining a team of people who can troubleshoot these kinds of problems. But I think you'll find that we are also pretty good about answering issues on the forums without regard to whether you have purchased a maintenance and support contract. Plus, we have an oustanding user community who often provide great answers before we have a chance to respond (blatant attempt to curry favor with the community,
).
Below is a list of key features by version. Each release contained more features and many, many bug fixes and minor enhancements. Personally, I'd have paid the full upgrade price just to get Comment Wrapping. I can't tell you how many times I have editted a block comment and had to reformat the block by hand--ouch! I'm not trying to be a salesman, here. I just want to share a little of our perspective.
Version 13Message List
Adaptive Formatting
New Options Dialog
Enhanced Generation of Doc Comments
Clipboard Tool Window
Quick Brace/Unbrace
URLs as Links
Version 12Dynamic Surround
Files Tool Window
Code Annotations
Preview Tool Window
Class Tool Window
Find Symbol Tool Window
XML and HTML Word Wrap
Copy and Paste in Color
Enhanced Key Binding Dialog
Java Project Improvements
Line Ruler
Color Picker
Drag and Drop Support for KDE and GNOME
Microsoft Windows Vista Support
 
Version 11Comment Wrapping
Code Templates
Enhanced Search and Replace
Auto-Completions
Regex Evaluator
Auto-Generation of Javadoc and XMLdoc
Additional Quick Refactorings
Vim Emulation
Improved Font Support on Linux
Ruby Support
J# Support
Version 10Updated UI: dockable windows, auto-hide windows, new icons
Subversion Support
Quick Rename
Numerous Debugger Enhancements: mixed mode view, watchpoints, hex view
Java Live Errors
Organize Imports
JUnit Support
Version 9Backup History
Surround With
Update Manager
Dual Monitor Support
Full-Screen Mode
Codewright Emulation
We continually analyze our pricing to try to provide a good value. This gets particularly challenging in the multiplatform cases. Some of our platforms, which shall remain nameless, take a disproportionate amount of time and energy to support. But we believe that providing a product on these platforms is really important to many of our customers.
Please keep posting this kind of feedback. I'll make sure it finds its way to the appropriate people. My responsibilities have more to do with product functionality than product pricing, but I try to make sure these viewpoints are represented. Sorry to write so much, but this is an important topic.