I could dance around this in so many ways but it wouldn’t be honest. Notae 2.0 is worth more than $15.

After thinking about it for a while, I think it needs to be priced in its class. That said, I want to reward those that have supported the program as far so while the price is going up, the serial numbers will not change and your version 1.x numbers will work for 2.0.

Why bother, one might ask? When you look at a car that everyone’s going crazy over and it’s priced at $12K, what’s your first thought? “Piece of crap. You gotta wonder how they’re making ‘em so cheap.” Yet, if you look at a car priced at $18K or $22K, then you give it some credit and start to actually look at it. People do the same with software. While I’m happy selling it at $15, the market is selling things with an average price of $35/40. If you look at them (especially Mori and Yojimbo) and compare to Notae 2.0 you’ll see that there’s little difference. Each of us has some give-and-take, but the core is the same. Why are they worth more? They’re not, really, and that’s one of the many reasons I made Notae: I wasn’t going to pay $39 for something I could write myself (in hindsight, this past year of my life might have been worth more than $39).

If you put Notae in a list like that with its current price everyone would think it was shareware junk. “He’s pricing it that low because no one will buy it otherwise!” Which isn’t true. You folks have been paying for my car this year (thank you). Yet, the impression of “cheapness” has been left, and that’s hard to fight. Especially, oddly, when the program appears to work as advertised. Few people go “great deal!” and plop it down (well, enough for a car payment). Most instead go “I wonder where the hole is.” You know, the hole? The part of the program the developer never got around to doing and it was implemented half-assedly and you only discover it about a week after you paid for it? Yeah, that hole.

I don’t feel Notae has one. I mean, I and a few hundred other people use it daily ( cough anonymous software update logs cough) and so far neither I nor another has come across any such place. Yet the fear is there if you suspect something is cheap.

Which is why I felt $29 was a good price. Everyone’s selling at $35 or higher and that at lest puts it into the same arena, but I also know that I think long and hard about anything over $30 and I suspect many others are the same way. I process things kind of like this:

• A ten? Buy it.
• Fifteen? Looks okay, get it.
• Twenty? Does it solve the problem? Get it.
• Thirty? Demo it for a while and see. Probably, though.

• Fourty? Well, wait. What else is there that does this?

This also comes down to why it was at $15 to begin with, and why I reluctantly move away from that. I really wanted it to be a good program that was affordable. Not cheap, but inexpensive. I wanted to be the guy with the neat program that could be had for the price of a lunch, not a dinner for two. Yet, the more I looked at it, the more basic economics took over and I realized that price matters more than I’d considered. It’s not just what I’m charging people, it’s also a statement of valuation. It’s saying “I only think this is worth $15.” — no matter what else I say.

So, a compromise. It’s a chance, and a concession, but one I felt needed.

For those of you that are still reading this, you can get Notae 2 until 1/31/07 for half off ($14.50) with the coupon code LAUNCHSPECIAL. I take care of my readers. Yes, yes I do.

For the hell of it, let’s go over the changes one more time:

• Supports multiple note types, including rich text, PDF (read-only), and Web Archive (read-only).
• Imports Web Archive, URLs, and HTML files on-disk as web notes.
• Imports PDF files on-disk as PDF notes.
• Exports to iPod as textual notes, even to multiple iPods at once.
• Full-screen editing mode.
• Tags browser makes it much easier to find notes without searching.
• Note header makes editing tags and renaming much easier.
• System-wide shortcuts to activate Notae and optionally prepare a new note for entry.
• Quick Entry window (with an SWS) to add one-off notes or have a little scratch pad.
• Native export: PDFs to PDF files, Web Archives to webarchive files, text notes to RTFD files.

• Text and URL clippings import.

Hey you, you there reading this. You know you want a copy at $14.50.