Well, Bill, seeing as how you are of course talking about Wersi let's look at that...

If you consider that by trading at the right time, for the right price, you often only lose a few hundred dollars each time you upgrade. Now consider that to get into a Wersi in the first place, particularly a well-speced one, you are looking at close to double the price of a good TOTL arranger. At least $3000 more than anything else.

Now, I don't know about you, but that $3k price difference pays for a LOT of 'upgrades', probably well over a decade or more (probably closer to two) of doing it on almost every model that comes out. Imagine losing $500 by trading. $3k gives you six model changes. New models once every three years... 18 years of upgrading for that $3k premium. OK, worst case scenario - you lose $1000 upgrading (although I've never done that!), you still get nine years of being TOTL for the same money...

I am quite sure that in a decade the hardware and software of a Wersi will not be compatible any more, unless you put that close to $3k into upgrades for the Wersi anyway (I've seen that price-list of Wersi hardware upgrades - Yikes! )

Not to mention that ALL of the 'closed' arrangers don't need another cent put into them to sound amazing, whereas to get the best out of an 'open' system, you have to add thousands MORE in VSTi's to get the basic sound to be noticeably better than a 'closed' arranger. This adds to the REAL cost of an 'open' system, making the difference between upgrading continually on closed systems and buying an exorbitantly expensive open one, and STILL having to spend quite a bit to stay current, much less than you make out.

Also, I note that you yourself are considerably behind the 'state of the art' as far as your own Wersi's hardware upgrades goes, aren't you? If they are so cheap, why have you not gone that route yourself...? You are, in effect, advising others to do what you don't do yourself...

It would be interesting to hear from you exactly how much it would cost to upgrade your own Wersi's hardware to be equivalent to their current TOTL specs, how much it cost in the first place (and new cost if someone started with your model), and how much you have spent on VSTi's for it (and what the cost of all the favorite VSTi's that most power users use). New CPU's, software, displays, peripherals, everything that is in a TOTL Wersi as of today...

TCO... Total cost of operation. To remain state of the art (which you do when upgrading to the latest Yamaha or Korg, etc.) over a decade or more is probably a LOT closer than you think, if you actually avail yourself of the upgrade path that Wersi offer. OF COURSE it's cheap if you don't upgrade

But so is NOT buying the latest Yamaha if you already have the previous one...