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[@Chris]
Category “I hate to hear a grown man cry” Department: you wrote “… The complexity of Windows privileges, mixed with the vagueries of system services and controls being enabled or disabled, seems to be an ever moving target. A quick search on Google will show examples of problems experienced by many software vendors using Microsoft Installer technology … Unfortunately, you may find the same MS Installer issues on your PC will affect v8 installation too …”
( a ) Stop complaining in public about the environment in which you voluntarily work, and into which you voluntarily release your programs.
( b ) It’s not an MSI problem. The direct web link fails. But a step-by-step approach works, where we manually go the the download page first, then we manually select the exact same filename from the failed link in the failed setup program. The problem is at your end, not ours.
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Category “I’m shocked, SHOCKED that others give away current programs” Department: you wrote “… We offer our software here for free in support of SOS. As a commercial business we only do that once we are focusing on a newer version. I am surprised you expect us to be giving away the current version of our commercial software …”
… and you wrote all that as if you have actually never visited SOS before and seen the dozen, DOZENS of current programs offered free by other vendors, not old versions, current versions.
Lemme explain Goodwill Marketing 101 to you …
… SOS, GOTD, Giveaway-Club, Bits du Jour, et alia, are places where vendors engage a wide range of users, and exchange value-for-value, where for the zero cost of giving away a license to a current program, the vendor gets feedback, exposure, expanded users, the chance to knock a competitor out from under some user’s fingertips, familiarity, and, given positive engagement, loyalty.
Try it, you’ll like it.
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Category “Marketing 101” Department: all those goodwill advantages are whittled away to negativity by ( in no particular order ):
— expiring term licenses
— inordinately complex registration
— failure to download, install, and or launch
— cannot be migrated to a new computer, inability to reinstall later
— the vendor not participating in the discussion, helpfully
— unresolved program misbehavior, though you can actually earn extra value by fixing something that breaks during our giveaway trials ( instead of complaining that it’s too hard )
— damage to user data and or the user’s operating system
— real malware infection, installation of unwanted and unexpected side programs
— program incessantly phoning home
— programs that auto update out of the free version
— ancient programs that have not been updated in years, even if they are current
— non-competitive and or ineffective programs
— uncompetitively expensive programs ( yeah, we get them free, but we know when the asking price is outlandish )
— immature unsophisticated user interfaces that cannot be resized, cannot be reskinned for clarity, fonts are not resizable with system or program controls, text messages cannot be copied as text, programs that do not offer standard Create / Save / Edit / Print control menus
— NRFPTY ( Nerf Putty ) programs that are Not Ready For Prime Time Yet ( we are not Alpha Beta testers )
— discontinued programs from which the vendor has moved on
— other users here have additional observations, read the page histories here at SOS, they are a shockingly deep and rich training ground for any programmer wanting to market their offering and wanting to avoid predictable snags.
Tick items on that list, and you tick off folks who tick you off their list in return — your choice.
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Category “Moral of the Story” Department: instead, we could have been enjoying and discussing your program’s features and benefits.
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