At 02:52 PM 3/12/2006, John Basilotto wrote:
Gentleman,
Something to think about....
There has been less than 10 "NO" posts in the last 48 hours.
Which is actually a huge number, compared to the number of posts in, say, a
week. I also haven't seen any "gosh that's a great idea" posts.
I've had over
30 conversations over the last few months with people who don't use the
reflector because they are intimidated by the highly technical content of
the posts on our reflector. A synthesis of their comments is "...[they are]
simply operators and not really interested in writing or even knowing about
software."
That seems to me to be a reflection of a lack of a good starting place on
flex-radio's web site to tell people what to do,
OR,
a lack of good response from direct inquiries to flex. If every question
directly to flex is met with: "post your question on the reflector" (and I
don't think that this is actually what happens) you WILL have a
problem. First, they (perceive that they) have to sign up for the
reflector, which adds a step to getting the answer AND they are now
subjected to a firehose of (to them) superfluous information about esoteric
and obscure minutia as well as rants about documentation or lack thereof.
(not realizing that most people respond both to the reflector and to the
original poster)
Despite numerous posts by others that they are welcome here, has not changed
their mind.
Have they said why they haven't changed their mind?
It's possible to have Yahoo posts vectored here but some think that doing so
would open the Spam floodgate. I belong to three Yahoo discussion groups; I
get virtually no Spam because I use a Spam blocker.
I hate spam blockers, both for practical and philosophical reasons.
For the practical: the blockers reject mail I need to get, e.g. stupid
AOL or "free internet account" formatted mail with embedded advertising
from my kid's room parents, and, when the "more sophisticated" blockers
start to reject all mail from a particular source after it is detected as
containing something "evil". This is what happens to mail from a Yahoo
group I'm in, about every two months I get an email from Yahoo saying, in
effect your firewall is bouncing our mail since <some date>.
Philosophically, I object because it's putting the work and effort of a
solution on me, instead of where it should be, on the ISP that is
forwarding mail with obviously forged headers. It just hides the ever
increasing magnitude of a problem that needs to be addressed at a much
higher level. (although I'm not a huge fan of AOLs "paid guaranteed
delivery", it does make the cost of sending spam non-zero)
The below post is what served as the catalyst in starting a Yahoo users
groups. Yahoo may not be the answer, but one thing is certain, the current
Reflect does not appear to meet the needs of the typical ham-a person who
just likes to get on his radio and talk to others. These folks may very
well be the dominant group of SDR1000 user in the future.
Original post.
Sent: Friday, March 10, 2006 7:42 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [Flexradio] Excuse my ignorance but...
I've been reading the mail here for a while before deciding to buy the
SDR1K, and one thing puzzles me.
There is virtually no discussion on actual use of the radio, by that I
mean do any of you operate on air ?
Keep up the good work, but remember not every Ham is a computer genius.
Some of us just like to operate the radio !!
73 de Keith VK6XH
And, did Keith get some useful responses? Sure he did. Several
people (11 in less than 12 hours) posted responses with user experiences,
all positive. More may have sent him off list replies. That's a pretty
forthright and positive response, and one which I think any manufacturer
would love to have.
More to the point: Did someone at Flex send Keith a personal email
pointing him to some reasonably well described usage? Did someone at Flex
put Keith in touch, directly, with another SDR user? If they did, then
Flex's sales efforts did the right thing. If they didn't and just left
Keith to twist in the wind, hoping for a response on the reflector, then
shame on them for not following up an obvious sales lead.
Seems that if this is typical of the 30 conversations you've had, then
there's some other problem, and one that (as amply expressed by others on
the reflector) a Yahoo group won't solve.
The other thing to think about is that some fraction of the people who hear
about the SDR1000 and are intimidated by the reflector probably aren't ones
who should buy the radio in the first place. It's not an appliance, in the
same sense as one of the radios from the big 3. Anyone who buys one
thinking it's a "take it out of the box, hook it up to the PC, and start
making Qs" is probably going to be disappointed. It has a totally different
user interface, it works a totally different way, etc.
If you go out and buy, e.g., a new IC-7000 (which I just did), you can rip
it out of the box, hook it up to 12V and an antenna, and get on the air
without even really reading the manual. That's because, despite all the
sophistication and features, it looks just like and works just like most
other HF radios. The big fat red wire goes to the +12V and the big fat
black wire goes to the ground. There's a button for turning on the power.
Push it, and it lights up and is ready to go in about 20 seconds. You push
the band switch and it goes up and down bands. You turn the knob and the
frequency changes, you turn another knob and the level of the static coming
out the speaker changes. You tune in WWV to see if it works, and it does.
You push the mode button and it toggles among the modes. Tune across 20m,
and there it is.
Compare this to the user experience with the SDR1000. Now, mind you I
haven't ordered a SDR1000 recently, and back when I got mine, it was pretty
spartan. But I assume the process works sort of like:
Get the box from UPS, install the audio card, thrash around with cables,
install some software on your PC (from 3 or 4 different sources), fiddle
some more, hope it works, etc. It's a LONG way from plug and play, and
potential buyers who expect this will find it painful.
Look at the VERY FIRST page of the "Quick Start" guide:
first.. the manual is version 1.7, but it refers to version 1.4.4 of the
software. That might make folks a bit nervous. But they plow on ahead..
Second: Getting your PC ready:
1) recommended to update your PC with all critical updates from MS
2) Install latest drivers for your audio card (if I ordered a Delta 44 from
Flex, do I do this before or after I install the card?)
3) optionally install ASIO4ALL (but only if it's V2.2 or lower, but is that
PowerSDR 2.2 or ASIO4ALL V2.2; and, do I have to do this? or is it really
optional? What if I don't? Will I have some horrible problem?) Oops, if I
want to do step 3, I have to contact Eric at flex for a WDM driver,
whatever that is. And, if I go to http://www.asio4all.com/ the very first
thing I see, right at the top of the page, is a big GREEN banner saying:
Matter Of Legal Threats On Behalf Of The Company Behind The "PLEXTOR" Brand
has been resolved in favor of the author. If it can happen to him, it can
happen to anyone.
Asio4all.com is a non-commercial site, hosted in Germany. So there. Sue me!
If that doesn't fill the would-be SDR user with trepidation, I don't know
what will. I'd run in panic, back to my nice safe IC-7000, where at least
I don't have to load 5 pieces of software, install a bunch of hardware, and
worry about getting involved in some horrible legal morass where my radio
will suddenly stop working, a'la all those folks with "crackberries".
--- The point is... folks who have fooled with opensource software and
experimental hardware and software will all view this as sort of normal: of
course you have to download 17 drivers. Of course, there's political cant
on half the websites because open source authors have strong opinions,
they're doing it for the glory and reputation, and don't much care if they
annoy people. Of course you're going to spend a couple hours trying to
figure out which plug goes in which socket, cabling up power and audio
signals, worrying about ground loops and noise pickup. Of course, you have
to figure out if version X of one application is compatible with Version Y
of another component. Of course, you have to go through a calibration
process.
That all just comes with the territory with experimental hardware and software.
Compare this with the "quick start" poster that comes with most consumer
electronics these days (like a DSL/Wireless router/firewall: Plug it in,
point the browser to a fixed address, answer the quick start questions, and
you're done. Or even something like a PC: Hook the green plug into the
green socket, the pink plug into the pink socket, and the power cord into
the only socket that will hold it, etc. All with pictures and drawings
showing which plug and which socket. Turn it on, answer an endless list of
questions, it works. Even my new IC-7000 has a section like this at the
front of the manual.
So.. the real question is whether the reflector is scaring away people who
really probably wouldn't be happy with an SDR-1000 in the first place. Or,
if someone has "just operated" before, and is looking to this as a first
foray into "experimenting" with radio, is Flex (and the user community)
making it easy enough for them to take that big scary (and expensive) leap
into the unknown. At least with the SDR1000, you don't have to whip out the
soldering iron, and there IS an active support community, which is a huge
advantage over many other potential avenues for tinkering with a software
radio.
Jim, W6RMK
