CompuServe Messages

A colleague of mine just cancelled his beta because he was told that the production units were going to ship at the end of January and it was costing him more money to buy a beta than to get a production unit because of how early he ordered the production unit. He has become completely upset with how you can never get any information out of New Tek and has cynically concluded that New Tek never wanted a sincere beta program as he can't understand why you would need 175 people to beta test it. I have had somebody phoning New Tek at least once a week for several weeks and have never gotten an answer that turned out to be accurate. The latest information I heard today from this guy who talked to New Tek was that they had figured out a software fix to reduce the amount of data passing through the chip and overheating it. So, I am pretty frustrated. On the other hand, On the other hand, most of the reviews that I have heard about the Flyer do emphasize its high quality video. And my staff person saw a demo in Florida and he liked the quality and he has a pretty good eye. I think the interface also is quite nice and easy to use, although I think a time-line metaphor is fundamentally better than a storyboard, insofar as it can actually incorporate a storyboard as well. Also – if one has an Toaster already, the incremental cost of a Flyer is really substantially less for what appears to be better quality than the alternative, and I think represents a better incremental cost even if you have an IBM and are looking to either the Fast Machine or the Targa Boards which I see as the competition. Michael