HMK's Spurious Thoughts Biased / Nicht immer ausgewogen

Here’s a good one from User Friendly.

(Note: It’s not my intend to pick on Basecamp here, I’m just using it as an example of a Web 2.0 hosted application)
If I get myself Basecamp it’s about 24$ / month. So I pay 12 * 24$ = 288$ in the first year. And every year thereafter.
Plus, I can only work when connected with the Internet. Not in the train, not in the plane (mostly). I need broadband internet access. Plus, if the company goes out of business (or decides to stop the service), I’m hosed. I can’t continue to use the product. With a traditional shrink-wrapped package, I shell out about the one year fee of a Web 2.0 app once (or maybe even less), but then I’m free to use it a few years and not upgrade.
Why can’t I get Basecamp (which is a really cool product, BTW) as a downloadable app, too? I would be able to set it up on my local machine or on a server behind our firewall with no bandwidth limitations etc.).
Yes, I’m well aware of the advantages of using a web-based, hosted application. But these advantages just don’t cut it, IMHO.

Browsing through my 400+ feeds (yuk) I find my part of the tech crowd’s echo chamber resonates with posts complaining about the iPhone’s lack of 3G, lack of third-party apps, lack of VoIP, too expensive etc.
Interesting enough, most of the guys complaining still want one. That’s the reality distortion field at its best.
Plus, I remember the tech-savvy crowd bashing a certain mp3 player for not having enough features a few years ago….