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I think they should give the premium features to those of us who pre-ordered, for free, permanently. It wouldn't cost them anything extra to do so (maybe a few

I think they should give the premium features to those of us who pre-ordered, for free, permanently. It wouldn't cost them anything extra to do so (maybe a few dollars/year in server costs for the entire pre-order userbase). Sure, they will lose potential subscriber costs for some pre-order customers, but if they can't sell enough WakeMates to make the pre-order crowd an insignificant blip, then they are not going to be able to succeed anyway. Furthermore, the pre-order crowd is the group you really, really want to be happy. They are going to be the first to give their impressions to the world, and those tweets/reviews/blog posts are going to be at the top of Google's search results for near-infinity. I feel like a pre-order was a commitment to Wakemate, and they are not honoring their side in expecting us to pay more to fully utilize the product. They can say that the premium model has features in addition to what was initially planned, but I think that anyone who planned to buy the product expected the free service to improve and add features over time anyway, so it seems that effort is instead being redirected to the premium version.

gizmo 17y ago
Exactly, I expected the web version to improve over time, and I expected (and was fully willing) to pay for a better and improved wakemate down the road (better battery life, smaller, etc). Having to pay for both hardware upgrades and for monthly analytics... that seems a bit much. Also the WakeMate marketing message is disingenuous: "Limited quantity, reserve today" it says on the front page, which indicates that the WakeMate device actually exist. From the email they sent this morning it's clear that they accepted "thousands" of pre-orders and that the device was still in the concept phase (otherwise they could never make all those changes to the design/internals). How a company acts in the first few months is generally a pretty good indicator of how the company is going to turn out. Maybe I should get out while I can.

gizmo 17y ago

Exactly, I expected the web version to improve over time, and I expected (and was fully willing) to pay for a better and improved wakemate down the road (better battery life, smaller, etc). Having to pay for both hardware upgrades and for monthly analytics... that seems a bit much. Also the WakeMate marketing message is disingenuous: "Limited quantity, reserve today" it says on the front page, which indicates that the WakeMate device actually exist. From the email they sent this morning it's clear that they accepted "thousands" of pre-orders and that the device was still in the concept phase (otherwise they could never make all those changes to the design/internals). How a company acts in the first few months is generally a pretty good indicator of how the company is going to turn out. Maybe I should get out while I can.