In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, gwicks <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
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I won't quote back any of the long and detailed list Geoff has just given us but I have a great tendency to agree with him on ninety percent of it. If we are to be honest with ourselves we could add a few lines to the list as well.
The point about the support given to users is well made but then you also have to take into account the fact that many of us traders are also human being with busy lives and commitments. I suspect that two of the examples may refer to me and I can only say in my defence that one of the people who I know went to Geoff at one of the shows was a major source of irritation to almost all of the traders one after the other. I was the third in line. He had a habit of calling between 9 and 11 pm. At first I answered his questions and explained at length what he had to do. He also came round to my house and we sat and sorted it out. Two months later he called again and said 'I know you explained this once but...' I explained again. a while later he called again with the same question. After a while it wears thin and the elastic snaps. After me complaining about repeated phone calls and explanations he wrote a long email telling me I should not be so short with him and listing his problems. Each one was clearly explained in the manual so I just listed the page and paragraph numbers. His reply was 'oh I never read manuals' What can you do? The other user was a failure of mine and I fully admit he caught me on a bad day - well have those.
I would counter these with a story of one customer who did not want to buy anything just wanted to retrieve his files from some ED disks. He had QPC2 but the PC would not see ED disks. I found a drive, built a box with a PSU and retrieved all the files onto HD disks for him for free. He was not alone in being helped for free. We are all saints and sinners in equal measure.
As a trader I have often found that new versions are available that I have not been informed of or sent copies of. Clearly, after all these years we have all ceased to communicate properly. When I came back to the UK and started QBranch 9 years ago I felt that there was much that could be done to improve the QL scene. I would like to think that QBranch has done some of those things but I would be the first to admit that, with 9 years of it under my belt and two young children, I am now guilty of some of the things I was angry with the older traders for.
I met up with Jochen this weekend to collect the next issue of QL Today and have a social day on the beach at Calais. We discussed a lot of QL issues and the lack of new software / hardware is one of the things that alarms us the most. I am no programmer so I can contribute little here but who do we have to write new stuff ? Nasta is working on some new hardware but his personal situation has been hard and he has little money to spend on prototyping - maybe QUANTA could help with this and then have the first batch for sale ?
Both Q Branch and TF Services make a loss each year. Just keeping the phone line and equipment maintained is bad enough but going to shows is expensive. We do it because we enjoy it and because we enjoy the users - on the whole. Tony may have meant that the Irish show was 'the best' because it had a big social element missing from other shows. If you take little or no money at the show you cannot afford a hotel or overnight stay and so the social element goes.
I would rather see some effort being put into refreshing the community than lose a good writer of both words and programs. This has to come for the customers too. I was trying to get some idea of what systems people used and how they rated them if they had multiple ones. After two issues of QLT mentioning this I had five replies!
-- Roy Wood Q Branch. 20 Locks Hill, Portslade, Sussex. Tel: +44 (0) 1273 386030 fax: +44 (0) 1273 430501 web : www.qbranch.demon.co.uk
