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Hi Brian,
"Note: this is not advice, nor is it Devine guidance. This is only my opinion."
From what you wrote, you have done work for them and gotten paid for it. So they know you and they know the quality of your work. So we are out of the "getting to know you" phase of a business relationship.
It is the nature of businesses to push for as much free stuff as possible. It is no reflection on you or trying to take advantage of you. It is just the nature of business.
It is a business decision on your part if you want to give something away. My rule of thumb is if the question can be answered in a sentence or maybe a "yes" or "no" then sure it is a free chat giveaway. But if the answer requires significant, specialized knowledge then the proper answer is "I would be thrilled to assist you in this new venture. I feel that I can play a significant part in helping you to succeed. I'll shoot a contract over to you and we can get started as soon as I get the approval back."
If they balk then you were not going to get the business anyway.
Again, only my humble opinion and not sage advice.
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Brian C Hart wrote: My business guy says, "Provide them free services for now to 'build relationship' and 'make them like you' in hopes they will pay later.
This is often never-ending.
Many years ago, i was in a company where our team was 'building credibility' in the first year. This continued in the second year also, and so on, for three more years. In the end, am not sure whether we had built 'enough credibility' at all. Meanwhile, i moved to a different team.
modified 18hrs ago.
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Last week I watched an Adam Savage post which touched on that.
The conclusion is generally -- ![Elephant | [mastadon]](https://www.codeproject.com/script/Forums/Images/elephant.gif) U, pay me!
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Brian C Hart wrote: Am I being played for a sucka?
I'm afraid your client is taking advantage of your good nature and acting in an unprofessional manner. It may be time for polite but firm communication from you (or better yet from your business guy) stating they will now be required to pay for services rendered.
Brian C Hart wrote: My business guy says, "Provide them free services for now to 'build relationship' and 'make them like you' in hopes they will pay later.
If your business guy is relying on hope, IMHO he's inexperienced, not qualified for the job or both. Sorry, but that's not how business is done. I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I've worked at enough successful early stage companies to appreciate bending over backwards for your early and first marquee customers without giving away the kitchen sink.
/ravi
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A thing I learned years ago; never work for free. Let's say you are the other company, and you get used to getting free consultancy/services from you. At what point would you think, "hey, let's start paying these guys now"? The chances are that you never would, after all if someone is a sucker enough to do work for free, why would you think that you should start paying?
Your friend is being very naive in this approach. Businesses very rarely award business to others based on them liking you. They award business because you provide a service that they need and which they don't currently have.
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Musicians fight this all the time. "Play in my club! I can't/won't pay you, but the exposure will help you get future gigs!"
There are no solutions, only trade-offs. - Thomas Sowell
A day can really slip by when you're deliberately avoiding what you're supposed to do.
- Calvin (Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes)
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Allowing precedents to be set can cut both ways. I understand trying to build up a business relation, but what's a business relation anyway if it doesn't involve the exchange of money?
If you show you're willing to do some valuable work for them for free, at what point are you allowed to say ok, that's enough, now you need to compensate me for that work...?
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I'm going to go against the grain here. In my experience, it is not at all uncommon to put in the work up front and trust that the quality of your work will pay off in the end. I'm mostly referring to actual software here, not advising on a grant. A company with deep pockets should have no problem paying for consultant work, and you should have no problem asking them.
Personally, I'm 7 months into a SaaS project where the customer expects a system that looks exactly like their old system...down to colors, fonts, layout, etc. All we have charged them for so far is 20 hours for custom design work. They've gotten a lot for free based on the expectations of a complete system. Unfortunately, software is never complete. When it's a 'rented' solution, it's often difficult to determine wants from needs. 
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
"Hope is contagious"
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IMHO if you're volunteering your time, there is a limit. And if you've been helping them for MONTHS, I'm guessing you've passed that limit.
Whenever someone tries to sell me something that I really don't want or need I use the excuse that it's just not in my budget. They can't argue with that. I think you could reverse it and just tell them that things have changed and you can't afford to keep doing it this way. You might lose them. But hopefully they know the value of your time and will pony up the cash.
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I used QCAD software designed my drawings and export it into PDF file.
but when I give it to print shop, they ask for .cdr format since they use CorelDraw software. (I bought my license to get this .cdr format).
So I wonder how this .cdr format is used to print out my drawings?
I have several more drawings to print out, so try to get understanding of this printing process in print shop in large scale print work.
Thanks a million.
diligent hands rule....
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First thoughts are that a print shop that can't work directly with PDF files is not worthy of being called a print shop. If a print shop told me they needed a .cdr file, I'd ask if that was their only alternative, or if they can accept other formats. Your best bet is to talk to the print shop, and not a bunch of programmers who know nothing about their printing process.
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there is a chance that millions of programmers in CP can have all kinds of brilliant ideas![Rose | [Rose]](https://www.codeproject.com/script/Forums/Images/rose.gif)
diligent hands rule....
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There is very little chance that one of these programmers has experience dealing with your print shop. If you want the input of anyone who might, you should give the name and location of that print shop.
I have very little printing experience, but everywhere I've printed has wanted and used flattened PDF files. The fact that your printer doesn't seem to doesn't speak very highly of them. Your best bet will still be to talk to the printer and ask them about your options as to what they can accept, and why the PDF you submitted is unacceptable.
Have you talked to them about using a flattened PDF?
> So I wonder how this .cdr format is used to print out my drawings?
Obviously, they open it in CorelDraw and print from there. No great mystery.
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Corel...
They're local to me, I've worked there one summer during my second-to-last year of college, and made some great contacts there, to whom I probably owe the start of my career as a software developer. But as a company? They lost my respect a long time ago. I don't know how they're still in business nowadays.
Remember, this is the company that still pushes WordPerfect, for gawd's sake.
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My dad swears by WP. I had forgot everything I knew about that program years ago. Tried to help him, and figured it had to have some way to apply a style. Nope - only copy/paste formats from paragraph to paragraph as far as I could tell. 
Tried to show him the ease of Word. Nope! No learning anything new, even if it would save bunches of time.
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There was a good reason WordPerfect reigned supreme (in its days), but there's also a good reason it got displaced.
I've been told on more than one occasion that WP is still the standard in lawyer offices. You'd think both Word and WP would have seamless import/export capabilities by now.
OTOH, I wouldn't be surprised if the Canadian government didn't require WP to be used--entirely for protectionism reasons. Since Corel is a Canadian company. And I'm sure they pay a lot more for their licenses than they could get for the entire MS Office suite. That's the sort of thing our government wastes our money on.
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My dad does paralegal work. WP used to be the standard, but from watching him, it appears the US legal system is slowly moving over to Word.
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I'm about to wipe my iPhone 11XR something or other I got "free" from Sprint as part of their bundled offering, yada yada. You know the drill. To be honest, I would be completely happy with a flip phone. I use computers, I do not do face time on my phone and the vast majority of my calls/text messages are 2FA. The calls I get are 90% or more spam. The only other useful feature is being able to take a picture before I take something apart. I could do that with a $20 camera.
The cheapest phone I Can find on Amazon is $499. wtf?
Going out to buy lottery tickets. $500 for a phone plus $40/month give or take for service. This is absurd.
Back to shopping.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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charlieg wrote: The cheapest phone I Can find on Amazon is $499. wtf?
Searching on Amazon for "NUU A23Plus Basic Cell Phone" returns quite a few less than $200. That search string is for a specific one.
charlieg wrote: completely happy with a flip phone
Pretty sure they have issued some new flip phones. Calls and text. Although my first flip phone only did calls.
Searching on Amazon with following produced even cheaper deals than prior one: "Senior Flip Phone Unlocked"
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I got an old S4 Galaxy from son, years ago, had a broken screen that cost me $165 to have fixed and had it until they no longer supported it.
Funny story I went to Wally World to get a protector for it and I asked the associate if they had any. He asked what I had and when I told him he called to the other associate in the store and said; "look you ever seen one of these".
So I upgraded to a S19 that I bought used online for $200, not sure exact price. I had it for about 4 years and then Verizon offered a free upgrade to an S23, that ended up costing $100 but was a good upgrade. I'll keep it until I die or they stop supporting it.
I'm like you I rarely use the thing, so it doesn't pay for me to spend a bunch of money on one. It was different when I ran my own business, but the S4 served me fine for many years.
If you can't find time to do it right the first time, how are you going to find time to do it again?
PartsBin an Electronics Part Organizer - Release Version 1.4.0 (Many new features) JaxCoder.com
Latest Article: EventAggregator
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Samsung Galaxy A20e. < $50. Prepayed, no abo. I use it 99% only as an alarm clock  
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Samsung Galaxy J2 Core (2020)[^]
I like it because it's small and light and it runs a not too old (as of yet) version of Android. (I'm a Win/Android C# developer).
/ravi
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I'm not really an old white guy, but I am phone averse.
I got a little $40 e-moto on prepaid and I liked it fine until updates slowed it down to the point of being unusable after a few years. It was indestructible though.
I now have a $100 Samsung Galaxy A25. I like it okay. Samsung's android extensions can be a bit annoying, like it notifies you a bit more than I'd like, but other than that, the phone is snappy, the camera is nice. It feels well constructed, all of that.
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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Probably going against the tide here but I'm an old white guy with an iPhone 12. Got it 4 years ago and I'm quite happy with it. I use computers for complicated, work related stuff so I want a phone that, as much as possible, just works: makes phone calls that are sufficiently clear, receives texts and email and takes a few pictures when I'm out in the field. I don't want/care to root my phone, get to alternate stores compile stuff or what not. I still have the old fashioned concept that a phone is (mostly) for phoning.
In the interest of complete disclosure, I also have a Apple family plan that I share with kids. In return they let me play with grand-kids  . If you are going to call me an Apple fanboy, I'm going to say that I also have a Microsoft 365 subscription (also shared with family) so at least I'm not partial to only one big tech company 
Mircea
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Old guy in UK here. I had an ancient Samsung Young (oh the irony) that I purchased from the O2 store for £9.99 about 12 years ago. On pay-as-you-go, spent about £10 every two months. But it was on Android4 and eventually didn't support security protocols that almost any website used (via WiFi).
So last year reluctantly bought a Pixel 7a from Tesco. £12/month for two years for the phone, plus £12/month for data (10gb/month) and very happy with it. Use it as much as the laptop now, and good camera.
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