What to do about Quark?

Posted : 25 Sep 2002

Quark is apparently going to release version 6 of Quark XPress early in 2003. This will be the OS X native version that many people have been waiting for so long. The problem is to actually decide on the best time to upgrade to minimise your cost. Most people have not upgraded to XPress 5 as version 4 does them quite nicely and are waiting for the OS X version before spending the $1,500 upgrade cost. But waiting may actually cost you more ...

The possible scenarios are :
1) Do nothing. Don't upgrade and stick with OS 9 for the duration
2) Upgrade to v5 now for $1,400 or so and then again to v6 for another $1,000 plus (or whatever the new upgrade price is) again in 3-6 months
3) Wait til v6 gets released and upgrade then. Quark's upgrade policy has recently been to charge more to people who have not upgraded to the latest version. So you could very well pay more to upgrade from v4 to v6 then from v5 to v6.
4) Upgrade to v5 just before v6 gets released and get a free upgrade to v6 - if they will have such a policy (unknown at this stage)
5) Crossgrade to Adobe In Design
6) Get sick of the whole thing and buy a desert island in the tropics to retire on

Comments
Quark upgrades have always been much more expensive than comparable Adobe upgrades. In Quark's defence you have been required to upgrade a lot less frequently than with Adobe.
The most expensive option appears to be to upgrade now and then again when v6 comes out. This appears to be the path that many dealers are advocating (money grubbers that they are). This would seem to be the least attractive option.
I advocate basically any option but 2). At the moment no one knows their exact upgrade policies or pricing and so it is currently impossible to predict the cheapest way to proceed. As I have more information come to hand I will let you know the state of play and my recommendations.

Adobe In Design and pdf workflow has never looked more attractive to be honest.

Current Pricing
Adobe In Design 2.0 - purchase new, $1,845
Adobe In Design 2.0 - upgrade from v1 or v1.5, $349
Adobe In Design 2.0 - crossgrade from Quark or Pagemaker $not currently available
Adobe Design Studio - purchase new, $2,525 (Photoshop, Illustrator, In Design, Acrobat)

Quark XPress 4.1 - purchase new, $2,195 (still available for a limited time)
Quark XPress 5.0 - purchase new, $3,515
Quark XPress 5.0 - upgrade from v4, $1,375
Quark XPress 5.0 - upgrade from v3, $2,135
Quark XPress 6.0 - new and upgrade prices unknown at present
If buying new then you cant beat Adobe Design Studio.