The time has come for us to begin talking publicly about our next major update: Sente 6.
We are not yet ready to discuss the big new features in Sente 6 because we are still some time away from shipping, but we are ready to start talking about some important details. In the coming weeks, I will be writing about some of these issues and soliciting input on many of the design decisions that we are making as we work on Sente 6.
We are, of course, paying close attention to ideas and requests already posted on our forums. The most important new features in Sente 6 can be directly traced back to this feedback.
Unfortunately, there is no way that we will be able to address every one of the requests we have received. There are some long-standing feature requests that we know are important to some of our users that we will not be addressing in Sente 6.0. On the other hand, we are addressing some very important issues that we know are of interest to a lot of our users.
There are a few questions that many people will have about a major update like Sente 6, so here is a first stab at answering them.
Will Sente 6 be a free upgrade? Sente 6 will be a paid update. Everyone who purchases Sente after January 1, 2009 (so all new purchases) will get the upgrade for free. Everyone else will have to pay for it. The price has not yet been determined, but our last paid update (September 2007) was $39.95.
Can I be a beta tester? As we have done with several of our larger releases lately, we will make "preview" versions available in advance of the final release. We will discourage using the preview releases for real work, of course, but you can get a sense of the new version and provide us with important feedback and bug reports. These preview releases will be widely available.
When will Sente 6 be released? We do not have a release date yet, but it should be sometime this Spring (2009). We are also expecting to produce several updates to the Sente 5 line before Sente 6 is released.
We are excited about the design and features of Sente 6 and we look forward to sharing them with you. In the mean time, we will be requesting input on a number of design issues and we hope that you will consider sharing your thoughts with us through the process.
