> There is quite a simple solution to the chicken and egg problem with > unzip. > Just send the enquirer a disk with it on. Most of us have a stock of > old DD > disks we no longer use. Just wrap one in bubble foam, put in a > cheap > envelope with a second class stamp. I've done it many times. Yes, usually that works, but in the case of Mr Barker in Antartica for example it was impractical (OK, an extreme example, but the situation does arise). I have been known to pop a QL emulators CD in the post to some people where the situation seemed to merit it, in the hope that helps the person concerned and of course pays benefit in terms of that person staying with the QL, buying stuff from traders, joining Quanta or whatever. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't, but I try.
> I have also successfully sold many copies of QPC2. When someone asks > for my > help in transferring files to a PC because they are abandoning the > QL, I > send them a copy of the QPC2 demo disk. Often the next stop for them > is Roy > or Jochen. Absolutely. I often recommend emulators or certain PD programs or to contact the traders to see if they have programs or services able to help them. I get about one or two emails from my website form on this subject every day and most result in the senders being directed towards the QL traders. I do offer to copy unzip to a disk if they send me the floppy with return postage of course. In my case, it's the volume of queries repeating the same information - my contacts arise from people who find QL software on my website - searches for "QL" seem to locate my website quite well on most search engines, even though I've never really used promotion and ranking services beyond the description and keywords meta tags in my pages. If there was minimal documentation on there somewhere it would help me and help others too. What we don't know is how many people try and give up of course. I'm just afraid of a scenario like the QL survey last year which discovered just how many 128K QL users minimally expanded systems are out there in fairly active use. Once the informationis on a page, I'll just make sure there's a link to it from my home page and it's there for all to read without even having to contact anyone, that way, I may only need to help people who run into problems rather than repeatedly pointing out the same things. > Sometimes the old fashioned solutions work best, :-) And sometimes it's easy to overlook the obvious too. As my boss sometimes says, "you need to reiterate very basic issues surprisingly often." > PS What about a nice little challenge for Quanta? Investigate the > possibility of a telephone line at all shows and then offer a > download > facility for those members who cannot access the internet! Good idea, and of course as Quanta have copies of most of my CDs which are essentially freeware collections, it might be equally easy to offer a "PD Copying Service" at shows too. I'm sure Quanta sub-librarians used to do this at shows in the past, maybe Quanta still does just I was asleep at the time ;-) Modern mobile phone links may make it practical to download moderate amounts of material where there isn't a landline (can't see demand being very large) - user just pays for online call time perhaps? Since QL software isn't at all large, downloading entire QL sites is often a matter of just a few megabytes, someone with broadband could quickly download most QL site content to a CD for copying at shows within obvious copyright limitations. I've more than once said yes to requests to give copies of my website on CD to people without internet access. With the will, there's always solutions and usually cheap, practical ones too. -- Dilwyn Jones -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 268.2.3/281 - Release Date: 14/03/2006 _______________________________________________ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
