"Guy Macon" <http://www.guymacon.com/>
wrote in message
news:OtednbMl8eumUxrbRVn_vgA@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Michael Mattias wrote:
>>
>>Repeated denial-of-service attacks on the PowerBASIC web-based Peer
>>Sup****t
>>Forums might engender more interest in a Usenet group....
>>
>>(Oops, I think I just made Homeland Security's **** list. They have no
>>sense
>>of humor at all.)
>
> I know the above is a joke, but it does represent a serious
> risk. the PowerBASIC web-boards are a single point of failure.
> If PowerBASIC goes belly up or becomes too sucessful and gets
> bought out, they could disapear. If someone had a ligitimate
> complaint about PoweBASIC inc. it could be censored. Right now
> the web-boards are great and there is nothing to complain about
> concerning the product or the company, but if things did go bad,
> it would be nice to have an uncensorable place to discuss it.
You know, I used to complain a lot, both in public fora and directly to
PowerBASIC Inc (whenever an individual employee of PowerBASIC Inc needed
to
be named).
Over the past couple of years, however, PowerBASIC Inc has really cleaned
up
their act and I have found almost no cases for complaints.
About 95% of the specific gripes over the years were one thing: the
unprofessional demeanor of the official sup****t personnel. However, the
current sup****t crew is about as prompt, courteous and professional as any
software publisher's. The only thing holding me back from making a generic
'ringing positive endorsement' of the CS group is that which Shakespeare
noted in his "Julius Ceasar:" "The evil men do lives after them; the good
is oft interred with the bones." That is, some of the incidents of the
past
were that unpleasant that I am simply unable to "get over it" at this
time.
Today I only have only two complaints, and both are manageable from my
end.
First, and truly minor, is that upgrades and updates are quite infrequent;
however, we have to offset that with the realization that we pay no annual
maintenance fee, so what can one really expect?
Second, and of somewhat more concern, is "sloppy beta testing," something
I
had not seen from PowerBASIC Inc until maybe five years ago. Ever wonder
why
there was a 7.01, 7.02, 7.03, 7.04, 8.01, 8.02, and 8.03? I don't, it was
substandard beta testing of 7.0 and 8.0. And they still have some problems
with backward compatibility, but
that was reduced a lot in the 8x series of releases (compared to the 7x
series).
But this I've handled by not upgrading immediately to anything, especially
anything-dot-zero. In the Real World, updating my compiler software every
couple of weeks with a patch release is not an option (I retest
everything),
so I'd rather wait a little longer knowing a maintenance release is not
going to be required
Sure, I have sent in lots of really outstanding, well-thought out and
generally excellent new feature suggestions which have yet to see the
light
of day in spite of their "obvious" greatness; then again, it's not my
money
which has to fund the development. (cf zero annual maintenance).
Sure, the do***entation is still mediocre (note that "mediocre" means
"unexceptional, for good or for ill") but so is everyone else's.
All in all I'm pretty satisfied with the product and the company behind
it.
Lastly: if there are complaints about something, you don't think the
"Blog-O-Sphere" would be overflowing with uncensored comments?
--
Michael C. Mattias
Tal Systems Inc.
Racine WI
mmattias@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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