So today we released a new product called DesktopX Professional. It's $499 and what it does is allow you to create relatively small applications incredibly quickly.

Creating software has a significant overhead attached to it. If you wanted to, for example, to create this clock here with say Visual Studio.net how long would it take you to write it? Well, writing something that tells the time wouldn't be hard. But about the actual clock? As you can see, it has a shadow under it, the edges are perfectly alpha blended, the clock hands are also alpha blended. And of course there's the artwork of the clock itself.

Creating something like this would not be trivial. It could not be done in a day. A good developer might be able to make it in a week or two. A typical developer would take several weeks and then it would only work on Windows 2000 or Windows XP since they would have to use layered windows to do the alpha blending. How long would it take, for instance, to make it so that the object was desktop level? That is, didn't go on top of your programs? That would take even longer. It could be done for sure, but it would take some effort. And after that time, you would have a clock. With DesktopX Pro, it can be done in less than 5 minutes. And the resulting program is a single 600k program. No DLLs, no runtimes.

In fact, here it is:

Elegant Analog Clock This simple analog clock adds polish to your desktop

[Download]

Most of the software our company makes is relatively "inexpensive". In fact, some software developers have accused us of "predatory pricing" over the years. Object Desktop is $50 and includes over a dozen programs. DesktopX standard is only $20 and it has built in NT based desktop security, a feature that is probably worth $150 by itself if you talk to IT managers.

Our pricing has, over the years, hurt us in corporate sales because it's so inexpensive that companies have thought it must just be a "toy". If there are any software developers reading this you are free to laugh at us for our stupidity:

DesktopX, the $20 version of it, allows you to embed ActiveX controls (ANY ActiveX control) right onto your desktop. That means, for $20 you could build your own custom web browser into the desktop and create a corporate kiosk. Then you could enable the desktop security features so that no one could mess with it. That ActiveX control could play a repeating .WMV file all day. In short, for $20 you have a corporate kiosk without requiring any additional software.  We must sell tons of copies of DesktopX to those who make kiosks right? Nope. Because $20 makes companies think there must be some huge gotcha.  Our goal was to try to sell DesktopX standard in quantity but in reality there just isn't a "mass" need for kiosks. So we sell DesktopX to end users and corporations alike in relatively low volumes.

Ironically, our $9,500 priced DirectSkin has become something of a standard in the custom GUI development market. It has the ability to turn a standard Windows program into a fully skinned one with only a few lines of code.  Smart IT managers are able to make that calculation in a nano-second -- $9,500 to wave a magic wand and make their plain old Windows app into something that has a cool skinned UI? It's a no brainer. 

Ironically, some of our own customers seem blissfully unaware of a) how good of a deal Object Desktop is at $50 or how much other software products cost.  I wasn't aware of this until we announced DesktopX Professional ($499) on WinCustomize and immediately got responses showing a near outrage at the price.

Think about that. $499 for a product that can let you turn out stand alone applications that are fully customized and can do virtually anything you want them to do.  Want to make your own personal virtual desktop manager? 5 minutes. How about a corporate messenger? 5 minutes. How about those companies that develop those nifty desktop gadgets you see? My kid downloaded a Finding Nemo toy from Disney.com which had the characters swimming across the desktop. Wonder how long that took to write? I bet you it took exponentially longer to do than it would have taken to do with DesktopX Pro.  $499. No brainer.

But DesktopX Pro isn't just cheap considering what it does. It's cheap compared to other software products out there. Let's take a journey to the scary world in which Photoshop is purchased rather than downloaded from some warez site.  A land where Shockwave sites are generated and Flash movies designed.  A place where documents are generated and not just read.  We call it...the real world:

Okay okay you say, but these are targeting specific groups (which DesktopX Pro is too btw). What about something a lot of users would make use of?

Okay, how about Adobe Acrobat? All it does is take a document and...um...well...turns it into a document. It's $99. It's popular enough that most people have Acrobat Reader on their machines. 

The point being, once you move away from software that is largely for personal use, enjoyment, it gets "expensive" in a hurry. Terms like "Return on Investment" become the selling point rather than "Hey, that's neat."  And if they think DesktopX Pro is expensive, I won't even talk about DesktopX Enterprise (>$10,000).

Check out DesktopX Pro (cool little programs available for download if nothing else) here: http://www.desktopx.net/pro.asp