CompuServe Messages

Christopher, I believe that most people who own Amigas have to, or have had to work with other machines. They are still waiting for a good spreadsheet. Part of the problem in the Amiga community is the severe misunderstanding of the role of beta tester and of the companies/authors to spell out what is expected. For example, GD obvoiusly did not seek spreadsheet users and ask them to user ProCalc, or they did but chose to ignore the comments. Another example: a time management package was release a while ago. I beta tested it. At first the publisher was not goin to let me beta test it because I knew too much about time management software on other platforms. But, after letting me test he and the author broke off all contact and did not even send me a release copy of the software. The reason is because I tested it thoroughly, privoded a detailed test report and opinions as far as pricing vs functionality base on my experience with that type of softwar. There was a basic flaw in the software'd Pert chart in that it could allow two paths between schedule points. This is not allowed (pre-requisites cannot be pre-requisites to themselves) in formal "pert-ology". I commented that the tasks should be nodes instead of paths (as is the accepted way of doint these charts to avoid that situation) and received a very angry, insulting letterin repsonse – and that was that. Amiga developers many times give software to freinds or relatives to test regardless of qualifications. The pressure is for the beta tester to priase the package regardless of usefulness, and not find any fundamental flaw in design or approach, but only a minor bug or two. So beta testers have a tendency to be people who are close to the author and have an intersest in keeping the author happy, rather than in the know. As for the gamers, it would be an interseting survey. I don't read the game sections of the mags and skip all new product game announcements. I always thought that a programming section would be better instead of [ MORE ]