Jonathan. Please note I am not trying to start anything here. I am just
curious about something. No bashing or flaming intended, just curiosity.
Since the pk already had keysoft 6.1 developed with the latest windows ce
platform, was or was it not a pretty easy thing to move that whole
operation to the braille note? I would have thought so, but I only have
experience programming in pascal and cobol.
I figure by the time that the pk came out, the development work on 6.1 had
pretty much been done since both units have pretty much an identical menu
structure and both use the same programs.
Am I close or way off in left field here?
Thanks.
At 2/10/2005, you wrote:
Diane, I am really pleased you made this point, because frankly, at the end
of a pretty tough week from this list, it gives me an avenue to comment.
in principle, I agree with the point you make, and I wouldn't have told the
world about KeySoft 6.1 when I did except for one thing. We were launching
the BrailleNote PK. It was really important to us that we let people know
what we were working on for the other members of the BrailleNote family, so
that loyal customers knew that they hadn't been abandoned. We'd put a lot
of research into ensuring that this very complex upgrade would be possible,
and by the time I announced it, we were sure that it could happen.
When we are dealing with software, what we can provide is our best
estimate. What we did with KeySoft 6.1 was incredibly ambitious, because
we're not just dealing with a new version of the software that adds new
features, but also a process whereby we completely take KeySoft out of
memory, and run a new piece of software that allows the entire operating
system to be upgraded. And, it is a completely accessible operating system
upgrade, something extremely rare. Now we could have just stopped work,
said that we'd ship it in December, and who cares about the consequences.
But how responsible would that have been? Who would have thanked us for
that? We have not just a legal but a moral obligation to make sure this
release is as robust as we can make it, and our development team here have
put in huge hours making this happen. We needed to test, test and test,
given the complex nature of this upgrade. We had a fantastic beta team who,
just as we thought we'd cracked all the serious issues, discovered some
small something that would have made the upgrade less attractive. Despite
the flack from some on this list, I am glad we fixed those issues rather
than releasing recklessly.
So while I appreciate the frustration, we have many customers who rely on
their units for study, business and professional management. We need to do
the responsible thing and ship a product when we genuinely consider it
shippable, and we also needed to let owners of the existing members of the
BrailleNote family know in no uncertain terms that the BrailleNote PK
didn't represent the end of the line for them.
Jonathan Mosen
BrailleNote Product Marketing Manager
HumanWare
DDI: +64-3-373-6192
Fax: +64-3-384 4933
Mobile: +64-21 466 736
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.humanware.com
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