Hi everyone,
I'm not a Powerbasic customer (yet) but like Tim who has posted recently,
I
am a long time follower of the PowerBASIC projects and endeavors (I'm
curious to see which direction things go before I make the move and become
a
customer of theirs). I remember back in 1985 when PowerBASIC (I think it
was
called TurboBASIC back then but it is the origiins ;-) was being compared,
in a french european magazine of the time, to QBasic and GFA Basic and
back
then, power and versatility wise, PowerBASIC ran circles around the other
two with their eyes closed, both hands tied behind their back and quite
possibly their legs tied together too ;-). When I first read (shortly
after
that) that PowerBASIC was a new incarnation of the formerly known
TurboBASIC
it automatically grasped my attention and I started following the progress
of evertthing ever since.
I have some good friends that are already PowerBASIC users (even since
back
in the days where PowerBASIC DOS was the only product available. Ive'
seen
first hand what it could do back then, but I was a little too young, still
in highschool, and I couldn't get my parents to buy me PowerBASIC. Curve
balls in life has pushed me away from the BASIC scene though I always
managed to keep an eye on things. One thing that I noticed was that
PowerBASIC has allways kept their promises in terms of compiler
performance
and speed of execution that they would boast about, when you get this kind
of performance you're definitaly allowed to boast about it ;-) no two ways
about that. They've been around for quite a while, and nonwithstanding
what
has been said recently, you just don't build that kind of product and
reputation for 20 some years without a certain degree of professionalism,
know how, and answering the needs of the customers. I've been many times
to
the PowerBASIC forums and their website and Mr. Zale is right in what he
says, it seems that no matter what the issue is, what question (big or
small) that might get posted tehre's always someone with an answer and a
will to help out (and I don't mean some random users, I mean someone from
PowerBASIC INC. being there, seeing how they can help their clients out.
I don't need to be a customer of theirs to realize that their past created
that reputation and that PowerBASIC Inc is geared and focused towards the
past (dos version), present and the future, which is exacly how today's
companies should be. I also commend the fact that they still offer the
DOS
version of their product and that they didn't go the same way as other
compiler makers and just cease to sup****t that platform, my hat is off to
them.
This being said, I have to say that as an unbiased reader of this
newsgroup,
I find it quite childish and immature to use a newsgroup such as this one
(or any other for that matter) for this kind of purpose. There are more
professional means of dealing with situations when they occur. From what
I
read here in the "Banned from powerbasic..." thread, Mr. Zale, Tim have
behaved themselves in a way that should be an example of how professionals
should behave. I have, for instance, no doubt in my mind that Robert
won't
post any phone numbers or any personal data of the kind. PowerBasic Inc.
has had a long history exemplary professional ethics which also helps
build
a reputation like the one they have. This even though these people showed
a
rather complete lack of such ethics by using this place for those
purposes,
they have all the emails, physical address, phone numbers they need to
"take
of business" so I fail to understand why they need to come on the
newsgroups
and try to bring PowerBasic Inc or any of it's CEO and/or employees.
As an unbiased (unbiased as in I have yet to become a customer of theirs)
individual, I raise my hat to Mr. Zale and everyone else from PowerBasic
Inc. I've seen post here for their highly professional behaviors they've
shown here in this truely pointless set of threads I've read. My hat is
truely off to all of them. Further more, I'd like to add that anything
I've
read here from them will in no way influence any of my future choices.
And like another member her mentioned, so what if the linux version never
occurs, has it ever occured to anyone that that might have commercial
reasons not to push the project forward, or that maybe they are waiting
for
the right "business strategic timing" to make their big announcement or
anything positive like that? Unlike many seem to believe, a bad reason
isn't always the reason why. There's such a thing as feasibility of a
project. too, so whether the linux version was promised, or not, it's the
business goals that need to take precedence here. What good would to be
to
anyone if they spend the 100s of thousands of dollars for the linux
version
only to find themselves in a situation that just doesn't return the
expected
results and needless losses and sacrifices suddenly need to be made?
Perhaps when the project started at the beginning they did polls and such
to
get an idea on if the project could be feasible. Maybe later down the
line,
they did such a feasibility study that yielded very different results.
Whatever the reason I'm sure it was a commercially sane reason. .Because
they put their reputation behind everything they do.
To sum it up, if I had their kind of reputation, I would make sure that
nothing puts that reputation in jeopardy so in that case, yes, every
decision, every new project, every new prospect is probably made with
their
reputation as one of the first priorities. It's no big deal if they did
cancel it, because that happens all the time. I like to "judge" a
company
based on what it did, not based on what doesn't exist yet. And based on
that, yeah, PowerBasic rocks (and I'm not even a customer yet ;-) hehe).
They prove it on their website, they prove it with their line of products,
they prove it on their forum (which as a sup****t form definitaly needs to
be
moderated) and they even proved it here, with the way the replied and
still
manage to leave the doors open even during these threads. No one here can
seriously think that PowerBasic isn't trying to settle the issues here and
I
commend and respect that of them.
I know, I'm not a customer, so why did I bother to post this? Like anyone
else here, I'm not a fan of injustice at all. I go by what I've read so
far
on the company and the products, I go by what people I trust (my friends
that is) that are customers of PowerBasic Inc. tell me. And by the fact
that they are all more than satisfied customers both for the products they
bought and for the service they've been getting ever since.
My two cents. For whatever it's worth, this is not the place, and the
techniques used to try to bring PowerBasic Inc. (or any other company for
that matter) down is not the way to settle these issues. There are more
professional ways to take care of things guys and the folks at PowerBasic
Imc have been naming these alternatives throughout the "banned from..."
thread. Use them, see what happens. Count to 10 first, they say it calms
the mind ;-) hehe.
..
|
