I would expect that there would be considerably less wear on the tube as most of it would be at low power vs even dot that every point is at “full” power. That is one reason not to overpower the machine. If you cut mainly paper the tube should live a lot longer than cutting thick Wenge.
The speed improvement thing is really not a base function its the speed of processing complex prints, but the concept is the same as going to the post office and sending something regular, expedited, or overnight. The post office isn’t going to throw your mail in an even slower truck because you didn’t pay for overnight.
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It seems to me the GF Premium features miss the mark for what users might really need.
- $50/mo. for access to clip art and faster processing is simply too high.
- The Premium features seem aimed more at casual/hobbyists who want to access designs, but they aren’t necessarily the ones who make money off a GF. They’re the least likely to pay that much for it.
- For people who use GF as a revenue source, the faster processing is good; but other features like improved (or ANY) file management, Snapmarks out of beta, better materials library, etc would be things that a craftsperson who uses the machine for production might want and pay for.
- I appreciate the “Export Design” function - I’ve missed having something like that, as I don’t always have easy access to original designs and uploads.
- Taking Snapmarks to the Premium model would be understandable but disappointing. I use it regularly and I’ve found it helps immensely. I would seriously have to evaluate whether it would be needed. If it were $15/mo as part of Premium, I could see the value; but not at $50/mo.
As a part-Hobbyist, part-Small Business Owner, I see both of these use cases clearly. From a hobbyist perspective, there are any number of places to get cheap or free vector designs. As a production user, I really want to see UI improvements to storing and accessing uploaded designs (folders, grouping, tagging, ability to organize in some way). Yeah, it would be nice to shave a few seconds off the “processing your design” step, but not at $600/year. Bottom line: the Premium doesn’t really provide enough value for either use case.
If you want to save on storage, maybe investigate the option to throw designs not used in a year into cold storage, the reload them if somebody accesses it (even if there’s a time lag).
One thing that might sway one way or another is to say when Snapmarks would go into Premium. And I highly recommend offering a limited-time $15 upgrade promotion when that happens. I’d probably take it. But not before.
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Fortunately, that’s not the way our system works: Glowforge Print customers are being routed to servers reserved for their use, which are up to 2x as fast as the ones we’ve been using prior to last month. In this case, it’s a bit more like buying a ticket on a 747 or a Concorde.
I think that’s fair.
Because people pay for the subscription, we have additional revenue to hire additional resources, so we can do more. The nice thing about this approach is that we don’t have to split up one fixed set of resources… the subscription service lets us add more resources.
Indeed! We’re trying to learn from all our customers, and any such feedback is helpful.
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“Fast Lane print prep - Glowforge Premium users get our fastest, ultra-high-performance “Fast Lane” cloud servers. These astonishingly powerful supercomputers are exclusively reserved for Premium members. These accelerate your print preparation by up to 4x over the Glowforge Print servers (which we upgraded for free last month, too ).”
So you made me wait for two years for my GF, and now you’re making me wait 4x longer than I have to for my prints? Yet again, I’m embarrassed to have ever had anything to do with you @dan.
I don’t mind the fee. In fact I appreciate the opportunity to get it at the discounted price. I just wish I could find the PG materials for both of my businesses!
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I don’t know how long you’ve been using your Glowforge but you are not waiting any longer than your were before the announcement of premium. Unless you pay for premium, you will just be staying with the very same features that you already had. Nothing is being taken away from you.
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No sure anyone understands this logic. Nothing has changed for your prints other than they are processed twice as fast than they were a couple months ago. The Premium subscribers will get even faster processing, which honestly does not increase speed for the actual print, only the pre-processing wait time. If I follow your line of thinking then technically we all have to wait 1000 times longer for our prints to begin than we have to. The company should have purchased a dozen super computers but they choose to have us stay on basic servers that are only twice as fast as we were using last year.
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We’re a captive audience, and initiating prints was always painfully slow. Being grateful for the fact that it’s only half as slow now as a year ago doesn’t make sense to me. Especially since they could made it four times faster.
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How do you propose they pay for that? A subscription maybe?
It costs money for that. They need money coming in to pay for it.
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Computers become faster, it’s a given thing, and the fact that they’re keeping those natural speedups as hostages against us to make a few bucks extra makes me think less of them. I always thought preparing the prints was too slow. With faster computers, they can finally make the preparations fast enough - as fast as it would have been hadn’t it been a service but a local connection where my computer was responsible for all the computations. But no, if I want my Glowforge, connected through their service, to be as fast as it had been hadn’t it been connected through their service, I have to pay more. You may keep thinking they’re awesome, good for you! I think less of them. Sell me shitty product and tell me you can make it ok if I pay you more? I’m not celebrating.
Google does not give away faster cloud services just because “computers get faster”. Faster computers allow them to serve more customers, and make more profit. Google is the one benefiting, not Glowforge.
Glowforge pays for certain compute performance from Google Cloud. They have to pay pay more for higher performance.
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"Google does not give away faster cloud services just because “computers get faster”. "
Of course they do!
This only runs up to 2018, but it clearly shows that cloud compute goes down in price as CPUs become faster: https://appdevelopermagazine.com/why-the-cost-of-cloud-computing-is-dropping-dramatically/
Running a service and keeping that speedup to themselves, though within their rights, still leaves me with the right to think less of them.
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As you pointed out earlier, Glowforge updated everybody to faster compute servers recently.
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What about people that already have them? Will you lose them if you don’t pay for premium?
Yes, they will leave beta and become a premium feature.
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As I read further I saw this discussed a little more too. Thanks for the answer as well 
A lot of these people aren’t here for a discussion, they are here to defend GF come hell or high water.
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to be fair, a lot of people aren’t here for discussion, they’re here to bash GF come hell or high water, too. 
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Actually, I keep reading because it’s fun to watch all the people complain about nothing changing, unless you choose to pay more for upgrades.
The new model of my car will have ~20 more HP. They should take mine back and give me a new one, because, you know, new cars get faster over time. Somehow, it’s not fair…
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