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vitoi

Reduce price of LabVIEW Professional from $4299 to $1500

Status: New

One of the biggest barriers to entry for LabVIEW and largest negative criticism for LabVIEW is its price.

 

The idea presented here is to reduce the price of LabVIEW Professional from $4299 to $1500. The motivation for this is to increase the LabVIEW community to achieve “critical mass”. That is, have sufficient users that there is a large community offering advice, offering support, writing books, writing handy utilities and generally using LabVIEW.

 

LabVIEW is a great development environment. It can do so much, but its uptake is much less than it’s potential. On the TIOBE Index (http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html), which measures the popularity of programming languages, LabVIEW is not in the Top 50. It could be!

 

Let’s examine the effect of such a change:

 

1) National Instruments profits: We, just like NI itself, would like NI to be successful and profitable. If the price was dropped to one third, I suspect the number of LabVIEW licenses sold would triple. So there (hopefully) should be no negative effect on profit. Hopefully, sales would increase by more than 3 times. There is the issue of support costs, however with some extra effort on addressing LabVIEW stability issues and some more tutorials, examples and broadcast information, the support issue could be addressed. (And the larger user community, which are already very helpful, would be more helpful). With cheaper LabVIEW, NI should sell more hardware, which wouln't hurt profits.

 

2) Existing Users. With more LabVIEW programmers, there would be more community support. With more LABVIEW use in industry, there would be more job opportunities.

 

3) Potential Users: The barrier to entry would be reduced and more potential users would become LabVIEW programmers. LabVIEW should also find more use with hobbyists.

22 Comments
vitoi
Active Participant

Let's hope you have lots of friends 🙂

vitoi
Active Participant

I just noticed that LabVIEW is in the Top 50 on the TIOBE index! It's currently ranked 47 with a rating of 0.25% (which as a very rough measure is the percentage of users).

 

Good news for the LabVIEW community.

Ecka
Member

 I just noticed that LabVIEW is on rank 35 with 0.400% of users. Its climbing. Good news 😃

ribarev
Member

I am not from USA.

Sorry from my bad English language.
I got the idea to do an electronic device based on LabView.
But I can not afford to buy LabView, because it worth my annual salary.
Only after do this device (if I succeed) I will can to buy LabView.
I think this is mission impossible.

 

vitoi
Active Participant

You can download an evaluation copy of LabVIEW for free.

There is also the student editions which is inexpensive.

 

ribarev
Member

Vitoi, thank you for your answer,
but unfortunately I no longer am a student ... also I need "Signal Processing and Control", but this is not included in the standard package.
Unfortunately, I can not afford to work more than 1-2 hours a day on this project (and every day) and therefore evaluation copy of Labviev did not work for me.
But at the this moment I write patent on another idea, and I hope that after three years I will can afford to buy everything I need.
Thanks again for your reply.
I wish you a nice and successful day.

vitoi
Active Participant

You don't need to be a student to buy the student edition; just can't use it for commercial use.

 

LabVIEW evaluation copy can be "reactivated" indefinitely. Basically, National Instruments doesn't mind you having a "free" copy as long as you don't use it commercially.

 

Anything in Signal Processing and Control can be done with standard LabVIEW - you just need to build your specific VIs up. Takes more time, but then cost less, which sounds like a good fit for you.

 

Talk to National Instruments in your country - I'm sure they'll be able to help you in your specific case.

ribarev
Member

Vitoi, thank you very much,
I will consider purchasing the LabView Student Edition

Good day!

ribarev
Member

Vitoi, thank you very much, that prompted me to buy LabView Student Edition, I found "NI LabVIEW Student Edition Software Suite - 2016" for only $ 58 and I buy it with my next paycheck.
Thank you again.

vitoi
Active Participant

The NI LabVIEW Student Edition (without the suite) is even cheaper at $19.95!