When I bought my Booksense, I compared it to the other book readers on the market taking into account the features I was interested in. At that time, I decided the Booksense was the book reader that best met my needs. That doesn't mean there aren't features I still want to see in the Booksense, but I'm not going to buy a product based on promises of features I still want to see, and to my knowledge, the other book readers still haven't implemented those features anyway. I suppose at some point, I may decide that another book reader has passed up the booksense for what I'm interested in, but I don't think we're there yet.
As you've said Raul, my advice would be to ignore the emotion in the messages you get and look for feature requests or problem reports that you need to address. People spent good money on the Booksense, and it's OK for them to get frusttrated when they have problems or don''t see features being implemented that they're interested in. In my job, I work with a lot of customers, although most of them are internal, but I try to follow this advice myself and encourage my employees to do the same. Look for the nuggets in the feedback we get and don't ever respond in kind. Never answer frustration with frustration. I myself want many of the features Gary is asking for. For my part, I realize these features are going to take some time though, and just because I haven't seen them yet, I'm not going to assume they aren't being worked on and we're never going to see them. Let me say here that I'm not implying Gary has inferred this. I just don't read his emails carefully enough to know this one way or the other. I'm just speaking for myself. I am a bit frutstrated with the talk, both from customers and employees of GW Micro, about the relationship between GW Micro and HIMS. For my part, I didn't buy my Booksense from HIMS, I bought it from GW Micro. When I request a feature from GW Micro, I expect GW Micro is working to make it happen, whether that means they're working on it themselves, or they're negotiating with HIMS. I don't want them to pass the buck to HIMS. Again, in my job I see the OEM business from both sides, and believe me, customers don't want to hear that we included a defective part from some other company. They didn't buy anything from that other company, and they're expecting us to address their problems or requests. Similarly, we'll work with our suppliers to handle these issues, even switching suppliers if we need to. -- Christopher [email protected] -----Original Message----- From: Raul A. Gallegos [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, August 18, 2010 9:31 PM To: Book Sense Discussion List Subject: Re: [GW-Booksense] Features To all, please don't feel that we think that people who wish for new features means that you are unhappy with the BookSense. In fact, we always welcome input, whether it's a new feature suggestion or an improvement, or a bug fix. Also, we don't read emotion into emails, but when something like the following is read, one can't help but wonder if users are upset because feature or bug X hasn't been fixed, or users are upset because their own personal needs have not been tended to. I'm referring to the following excerpt from Gary King: > I wonder just how much programming time HIMS dedicates to the > BookSense compared to their far more expensive notetakers. Will we > ever see any of the features we've requested from the first, such as > > setting independent volume levels for the menu voice and playback > and the capability of listening to Overdrive books and other > DRM-protected files? The above quote is a perfect example of the high priority items we have been communicating with HIMS that need to be addressed. However just because they are not added from the beginning or during a time frame of our wanting, it does not automatically mean that no one is listening. Furthermore, it does not mean that higher priority is given to the expensive notetakers. In fact, during the BookSense release and the various updates from last year, we got a lot of flack from the notetaker users for the same thing. There were many messages which implied that Braille Sense users were left in the dust now that the cheap hardware such as the BookSense was out and that HIMS must be dedicating all their attention to the BookSense users who don't have to spend all that money since rehab wasn't buying them. So you tell me, does this sound familiar? If you don't believe me, go read our list archives on the gw-notetaker list. Basically it comes down to the old saying, "screwed if you do, and screwed if you don't." HIMS makes choices on where their time and development goes and that is something we do not control. Remember, HIMS sells all over the world and we only sell BookSense in the U.S. and the Sense notetakers in North America. That leaves quite a few other countries where the Sense products are sold and HIMS still needs to consider those users' needs. If you feel the negative aspects of the BookSense outweigh the positive ones and cannot recommend it to others, that is your prerogative. Everyone has to judge whether their glass is half-full or half-empty. Personally I would recommend or not recommend a product based on how it's going to meet the user's needs. For example, a weak point of the BooksEnse is the poor pronunciation in the TTS such as October said as Octoaboo. However if someone wants to use it for reading Audible.com and NLS books only and could not care less about the document reader, would I recommend the BookSense? Yes I would. Many thanks, and good night. -- Raul A. Gallegos GW Micro Technical Support Team Voice 260-489-3671, Fax 260-489-2608 Web http://www.gwmicro.com If you reply to this message it will be delivered to the original sender only. If your reply would benefit others on the list andyour message is related to GW Micro or the BookSense, then please consider sending your message to [email protected] so the entire list will receive it. To manage your subscription to gw-booksense, visit: http://www.gwmicro.com/listserv If you reply to this message it will be delivered to the original sender only. If your reply would benefit others on the list andyour message is related to GW Micro or the BookSense, then please consider sending your message to [email protected] so the entire list will receive it. To manage your subscription to gw-booksense, visit: http://www.gwmicro.com/listserv
