[no subject]

It turns out that I have two //e machines with Ramworks II cards and
both of them failed in the same manner as my friends Ramworks III
did. In fact, we tried his card in my machine, my Quickie with his
card/my card i.e., a ton of combinations. The all failed. From my
perspective, this is far from intermittent. 

> The problem was also related to the type of image being scanned.

It was text from Newsweek and NAUG. What else would you scan with
InWords, Madonna?

> The facts of this matter are that we were contacted by your friend when he
> received his copy and was unable to use it. I personally spent several hours
> attempting to duplicate the problem on our Apple IIe with a 1Mb RamWorks, 

What version. I bet a cookie that it wasn't a RamWorks II/III.

> Your friend OFFERED to send us his card, by FedEx, at our expense.

Not true at all. You folks asked that he send it. He wasn't too keen on
the idea at first, however, in the spirit of getting a working program,
he agreed.

> As far as not thanking your friend, nothing could be further from the
> truth -- just ask him.

You did say thanks, however, he did invest in at least 6 long distance
calls at day time credit card rates and was rewarded with the message
that "no one else was having the problem."

> I have been carrying on a conversation on AOL for quite some time now - I 
> haven't noted any of the hostility that you show in him [why is that?]. He 
> seems to be quite happy with the new version. Further, we never denied the 
> existence of the problem - we were simply unable to duplicate it with our 
> hardware confirguration. It's hard to fix something, if you can't make it 
> break.  

Hostility is a relevant thing. He has been very unhappy in his
conversations with me.

> Next your comments about the delays in beta testing InWords imply
> that we intentionally withheld its release for some unknown
> reason.

Not at all. My pain in this area has to do with each call to WestCode
asking about V1.1 ALWAYS resulted in a statement that, "It will be out
in X, where X was 30 days from the query. This is backed up by numerous
posts to the net on this subject. If you don't have a clue, say
so. Many of the folks on the net are programmers and can understand
such honesty.

I called and was sent a "beta version." It promptly fell into the
monitor while scanning a GNO press release (Hello Jawaid). I took it to
work and copied it and the copy did the same thing so I bundled it and
an explanation into an 8X11 manilla envelope with cardboard so it would
arrive intact at your shop. To date, not a word of thanks - See
customer comment at the end.

> I was personally responsible for the majority of the InWords testing
> process over the past year.

Don't brag. It wasn't very good and it dragged on well over a year.

> InWords 1.1 is more than the promised free bug fix -- it is a 
> complete rewrite of the program, with a dozen new features as well as a 
> fantastic supplement manual.  

It is a working version of a program. That is
what folks expected when they bought it in the first place.

> The fact that we charged $5.00 for shipping is not at all
> relevant.

Yes it is. The $5 fee didn't surface for at least a year after the
program was released. The notice that came with mine said I would be
upgraded free to version 1.1. Not a whisper of any sort of fee.

> With the  costs of the packaging and mailing alone, that
> $5.00 represents a substantial LOSS, not even considering the
> development time of the program or manual.

First, lets keep in mind that the "upgrade" was providing a "working"
version of the program. This is something the original people that
bought the program "thought" they were buying. Who buys a "cripple"
program with a promise of a working version. None of the advertising
said, "Buy a minimal working version of our program and we will upgrade
it sometime in the future to something less than IBM clone computers
have using the same scanner technology."

Lets talk about the "Update Manual;" it is a five inch square manual of
30 pages so 5 * 5 * 30 = 750 gives the number of square inches of
information. A normal sheet of paper is 8' 11' = 88 so 750/88 = a HUGE
8 1/2  page manual. I didn't deduct for the 9 blank pages which would
of yielded 5 * 5 * 21 = 525 sqare inches which then yields 525/88 = 6
pages. Hope you didn't stay up nights writing it ;-)

> Finally, you state that "From my perspective, WestCode is not customer 
> oriented." 

I rest my case. Read the above

> Why, because we identified a problem, and provided a quick and free solution?

This should read, "A working version." In my humble estimation, a minimal
amount of testing with a //e and the most popular memory card for that
machine would have turned up the problem.

> I hope you do a little fact checking the next time you decide to make 
> groundless accusations on the Internet. Some of us get tired of reading 
> letters written from an obviously distorted "perspective".

I don't believe my perspective is at all distorted. I feel that I was
"had" by WestCode on this product and because of this perspecitive,
I've delayed buying Pointless which would probably be quite usefull to
me since I have a IIgs.

Alan Bird is indeed a "huge" Apple ][ programmer and in defference to
this I kept from saying anything about the InWords debacle for many
months. However, I finally felt that something had to be said about
such a poor execution by one or more people associated with this
product.

> Tony Gentile, Support Manager
> WestCode Software, Inc.
> 
> ----- end of WestCode letter
> 
> -- 
> fadden@uts.amdahl.com (Andy McFadden)
> [ Above opinions are mine, Amdahl has nothing to do with them, etc, etc. ]

Kind Regards,
-- 

		Joe Walters att!ihlpm!bird, NW 31-K14 (708) 224-7189
		To know, and not to do, is not yet to know