An individual license for VMware Workstation retails for about $199 (USD). It is frequently used by inexperienced users who tend to need a lot of support. It's my observation that many of those users lack the basic technical skills needed to use a moderately sophisticated program like this. As such, to break even, VMware would need to charge a LOT of money for a maintenance program because the labor cost would be astronomical. Not many people are going to pay $600/year for a $200 program.
If you were a large business with hundreds (or thousands) of VMware deployments and if you were paying more than 6 figures a year for annual maintenance contracts, you could probably get them to throw-in dedicated support for Workstation for free. Anything short of that, and you'll have to figure things out for yourself and surf these user-driven forums. This is how most companies operate now.
I have been assisted by some good volunteers here -and my thanks goes out to them. Relying on the good nature of volunteers is not a good plan though. If I could have 1 wish, it would be for VMware to provide 1 paid and qualified service technician read this forum once a week and provide feedback on the technical problems that warrant attention.
Ray
