WinZip training

A few years back during the heyday of my dot com years I joked around with a friend about a ficticious training course we'd run. It was about the time that Geek Cruises started up and we figured what engineers really needed was a no-brainer course held in exotic locations that they could get their boss to pay for. The dumbest product we figured you could offer training for would be WinZip. Then at parties we'd start giving people the rap that we worked for a company actually running WinZip training courses, and for a while it was amazing that some people even thought it was a good idea.

Ironically Geek Cruises went on to do really well - and I mean really well - and WinZip ended up plunging into oblivion partly becuase almost no one who used it ever paid for it, but mostly because Windows XP has, since 2002 provided the same functionality completely for free. Its amazing how few computer users seem to realize that, and many are still doggedly using their WinZip and ignoring the "Evaluation period expired" dialog box every time.

Now an equity firm Vector Capital has purchased WinZip obviously thinking they can make some money from it. I wonder if anyone ever bothered to tell them that WinZip is now obsolete? Even though WinZip is still downloaded 500,000 times a week I'm expecting those people to wise up real fast when Vector tries to get some money out of them, or perhaps causes that evaluation period to really end after 30 days. Some of the other things I've seen WinZip doing just don't make sense - a plugin for Outlook that automatically compresses your attachments? Sounds like a good idea, but don't they know how many corporations automatically block or strip all .zip file attachments, being one of the most prevalent vectors for viruses?

Or Vector already know that WinZip is a dead duck but they are just planning on selling WinZip training classes in exotic locations. Maybe they should partner with the Geek Cruises guy and work something out? Alternatively they can turn free WinZip into another god-awful platform for ad-ware and make a bunch of money from people like that.