Upgrade and Support Policy

Before you purchase a piece of software you need to know if you can get your questions answered, if you can expect bugs to be fixed, and if new features will be added. This is especially important for automation software as new automation hardware is being developed all the time.

What follows is our plan to make sure that your questions are answered, new features added, and problems resolved. We have tried hard to be fair to you, all our users, and to us.

We intend to release a new version of HCA approximately once a year.
What this means: HCA 8.0 was released in June 2008. We expect to release HCA 9.0 sometime in the 3rd quarter of 2009. This is not a guarantee! Sometimes the software is released to coincide with the release of newly supported hardware and sometimes it just takes longer.

Registered users of a previous version of HCA can upgrade to the new version of HCA for less than the full price of the new version.
What this means: If you have registered HCA 1.0, 2.0, 2.5, 3.x, 4.x, 5.x, 6.x, or 7.x you can upgrade to HCA 8 at a special pricing level.

If you have purchased HCA within sixty days months prior to the release of a new version, we will upgrade you via download at no charge if you ask.
What this means: If between April 17th 2007 and June 17th 2007 you purchased HCA 7, or purchased an upgrade to HCA 7 from a previous version, you can upgrade to HCA 8 for no cost.

We intend to release a point version of HCA approximately every 4 months. These point releases will fix bugs and possibly add new features. These are provided at no charge to all registered users of that version.
What this means: We expect to release HCA 8.1 in September 2008 and 7.2 in January 2009. If you are a registered HCA 8 user you get these upgrades by download at no charge.

We will answer support questions for the current and previous version of HCA to registered users only.
What this means: Since the current version of HCA is 8, if you are a registered user of 7.x or 8.x you can ask support questions via email and we will answer them. If you are a 1.0, 2.0, 2.5, 3.0, 4.x, 5.x, or 6.x user we probably will not answer your question until you upgrade.

We do not intend and do not commit to fix any bugs found in versions of HCA other than the current version.
What this means: HCA 8 is the current version, so if you find a bug in HCA 7 we may not fix it but provide the fix in the next version 8 point release. As a HCA 7 user, to get the fix you must upgrade. If you are requesting a new feature, and that feature is in the current version of HCA, the answer is to upgrade to the current version.