Well, it's kinda like the old free transmission inspection scam that used to be played.
A certain national chain transmission repair company would bring your vehicle in, take the transmission out, tear it down and inspect it.
Well, you got your free transmission inspection, but what they didn't tell ya was that you would have to pay $500 for them to put it back together and put it back in your car.
If they tried to sell just the software package, most divers would probably opt out on it because, for most divers, analyzing the dive later on is just not that important. But the dive computer companies rely upon the rice-in-the-coconut trick. You have the software there and your curiosity demands that you buy the cable to see what the software will do.
Often times it's prudent to load the software, look at the sample data given and then determine if one really wants to invest in a $100 cable that will provide data downloading to what can be described as, at best, mediocre software.
the K