On Fri, 13 Dec 2002, Eli Marmor wrote: > PC Magazine, for example, has done a great job for years, with 22 > annual comparisons, per year. One of those comparisons, repeated any > year, compared all the printers that were announced that year (more > than 100 PER YEAR). These comparisons covered almost anything you can > imagine. They were very objective, although some of the competitors > advertised in PC-Magazine.
and because this kind of thing takes a lot of effort - they only did it for a more important products in their field. and they sell the magazine for money, to a lot of subscribers. perhaps then you are approaching the wrong crowd - you should approach the different linux magazines with this suggestion - hopeing they begin it now, and be able to grow the ammount of products tested, as their circulation (as they call it) increases. > > If it is a strategic decision for you and/or your company, maybe it > > will pay to do the research yourself. You have a very good head start > > <cynic> > Let's go forward: if it's strategic, maybe it will pay to develop it > from scratch! > </cynic> then don't be a perfectionist. there are only a _few_ stategic decisions a company needs to make. most other decisoins are simply tactical decisions, and can be corrected - _if_ the need arises. > > already. You know of a wide range of products that fit the general > > description. This is much more than most people start with. List your > > criteria, search for information about each product and try to grade > > them based on each criterion. Such comparative tables do help. If > > nothing else, it will clarify quite a few things for you, and will > > help you make informed decisions. > > You can't just "harvest" details from the Internet and build a check > list; > You should try all of the choices in order to get a decision. > This is the only way to decide which of them is really the easiet. > And which of them is really the fastest. > But this forces you to download and install all of them learn all of > them, etc. well, you don't really have to download and test all of them, not with a full-scale test. when i need something form the open source world, i first try what i know about - if it is good enough, i take it. for things i'm not aware of a 'category killer' for, i google, read about a few, cancel most on the bases of their APIs or config file formats, or so, try one or two, and then decide if one is "good enough", or i'll write it on my own. i also sometimes just read about tools randomally, assuming that knowing them would probably come handy in the future. you might argue that with a better tool, i could do what i wanted in less time. but this time is time i already saved by only doing a rather shallow comparison. so there's a trade off here. if you waste too much time on the comparisons, you eventually lose time on doing what you actually want to do. and eventually, what you're measured with is what you bring to the customer in, at the end of the day. -- guy, who taught himself that perfectionism will only make him miserable. "For world domination - press 1, or dial 0, and please hold, for the creator." -- nob o. dy ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
