PlecoDict - any place with discounts?

[flameproof]

Is there any place PlecoDict can be bought with a discount?

And what package is suggested anyway? I get confused with all the different dictionaries. Wouldn't be one good dictionary just enough?

[adrianlondon]

Not aware of any places with discounts, and I'm usually good at hunting these things out.

Although the software seems expensive at first glance, most of that (I think) is licencing costs of the dictionaries it uses. And, as the company behind PlecoDict has, one assumes, already done a deal and arranged the pricing, there's not much discounting they can do.

I went for the middle package - I forget now what it was referred to as but I have the ABC and NWP dictionaries. The ABC dictionary is excellent. The NWP one is lacking quite a lot, but I don't think there are any good English->Chinese (with pinyin) dictionaries out there. Once they implement the full-text-search against the ABC dictionary, then I'll be able to use just that one dictionary for translating both ways.

Wenlin should allow that too, as it suffers the same problem.

[roddy]

See this discussion on which package to get for more info.

Never seen any Plecodict discounts, although if you are a university student you might be able to get the university to set up some kind of bulk purchasing deal on that basis.

[flameproof]

OK, the discount question is answered. Saves lots of time too....

For the Dict use, I wonder if you can buy the minimum package and use as add on one of the free Dicts?

For example, I use ZDT and I am fairly happy with that Dict used. My demand is not that extremely high.

[beirne]

Once they implement the full-text-search against the ABC dictionary, then I'll be able to use just that one dictionary for translating both ways.

Wenlin should allow that too, as it suffers the same problem.

You can do it with Wenlin:

1. Select List->Words by Pinyin
   
2. Hit OK, leaving "a" in the entry field.
   
3. Search for the English word.
   

You can also search by regular expressions, which can be helpful for multi-word searches where you aren't sure about the punctuation.

[adrianlondon]

Gosh, so you just dump the entire dictionary to the screen and then text-search it? Cool. It worked well. Thanks!

[roddy]

Just noticed this on Pleco's site

We've just been issued a GSA schedule contract; US government buyers can now purchase our software at a discount under contract number GS-35F-0215T.]

So discounts for some, at least.

[mikelove]

Yeah, basically in exchange for giving the US government a (sizable) discount and filling out a bunch of forms attesting to the fact that your product does not contain any components manufactured by 8-year-olds and that none of your company directors are affiliated with Al-Qaeda, they waive the usual 3 months of bureaucratic malarkey required whenever they make a large purchase from you. So now if a government agency wants to buy a few hundred copies of PlecoDict they can just call us up and place an order without a lot of extra fuss. Doesn't do much good for regular users, though, I'm afraid, except in the sense that more sales mean more money to develop cool new products and make you wait forever for us to release them.

[djwebb2004]

mikelove, I wouldn't have thought the US government wanted to buy Plecodict? Are they all learning Chinese in the White House?

[mikelove]

Well not exactly, but I'm sure you can think of a number of government organizations that would be interested in working with Chinese. And that's all I should say about that.

[flameproof]

djwebb2004

I think it's more related to the fact that governments buy their supplies in a certain, usually complicated way. I have been through that too with a product that I sell. It was like that:

1. They contacted me that they are interested

2. They ask me if I like to sell, sure I am...

3. They ask me to join their tender process

4. They weren't sure about how to write the tender, so they ask me what to write...

5. The tender opened with a item description exactly taken from my catalog

6. Obviously I was the only one which could take part, and no surprise - won!

7. The whole process took only 6 month or so.

Mike, I just wonder, do governments ask for discounts? I guess you can inflate the price by 500% and sell the same number, or give it out for free and still turnover the same number.

Since I ask the initial question, just a reminder: There is no place which gives a discount for Pleco for "normal" people. So go out and buy it TODAY. It's such a great a tool and in the end I regretted that the price research took me a few (lost) days.