A discount is always good :) Brand promotion is always fine too because they've got to do what they've got to do. Anyways the ones mentioned sounds like a low-cost or no-cost promotion. Some companies can dump a quarter mil or a few mil a year doing a bunch of trade shows and magazine/web ads ... and the results don't or just can't match the expectations. The new low-cost social way of doing it can generate lots of excitement just as well too... i think...
(The other day a car company asked people to make and post a 5.9 second video cliip on why they're drooling on ths car... and they're giving away the car.)
bye

When I was a youngster in New Zealand, it was against the law for companies using competitions as promotions to oblige you to buy their product as a condition of entry. I'm inclined to agree with that thinking: if purchase is a condition of entry, the product on sale is a proxy lottery ticket for the prize, which, unless it's the product itself or a complement to the product, isn't a promotion for the product itself. However, the argument against that is that, under those circumstances, promotions are usually deductible, which means that other taxpayers are subsidising activities normally unrelated to the promoter's business.
On the other hand, discounting is a beneficial incentive available to every potential buyer, and can be accounted for by each purchaser. The product is better value while the discount applies, making it more competitive within its market niche, making purchase more attractive in some cases, and making potential customers of some who wouldn't be with the product at full price. It offers the promotional benefit to every customer, which satisfies my natural inclination toward socialism.
I don't think "disgust" would be the sort of reaction I'd have to those considerations, though! I rest more easily with dispassionate decisions.

WOW! Thanks for mentioning GstarCAD2012. I looked them up, then read the htm and 24-page pdf about the history of the Intellicad, Boomerang (how employees bounced around for 10 years between several CAD and non-CAD companies, dodging microsoft, skirting Autodesk, etc...) It seems kind of lurid, surreal, and comic all in one....


http://www.gstarcad.us/window/history.htm

http://www.gstarcad.us/pdf/OutsideLookAtIntelliCAD.pdf

PTC and Bentley are also mentioned. It now is becoming clearer to me how the various "AutoCAD clone" companies are able to use the core of ACAD, but use similar or totally dissimilar user interfaces and market themselves at various prices and still not pose grave danger to AutoDesk/AutoCAD. I suppose (presume) that some form of royalties and barriers funnel money to AD and yet legal contracts limit their growth, despite the marketing feints at overtaking Autodesk. There should be a facebook-based-timeline similar to the faceboo-World-War-2 timeline, hehehehe...

http://mshiltonj.com/software_wars/

FOUND IT!... So, someone should make a CAD Vendors Wars/Campaigns Map something like this....