I think the free upgrades usually happen when the main release has been rather buggy, and it is needed to solve some issue that cropped up and was to large to be a simple patch! The paid mid-year releases are more toward the cool upgrade type that add a pile of RTs and some cool requested features.

Last year if you remember there was a free upgrade mid year, that upgraded just the 2010 program to 2010.5, and a paid upgrade that added RTs and stuff to that.

I waited for the 2011 upgrade to pay and it cost more, so I think this year i will upgrade in july, and get the new stuff and see what december brings.

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