Hello:
Yes you are see some fustrated customers. For myself the biggest
issue I had was that I spent a lot of money on a device 12 months ago
expecting to get a fully functional comercial device and I was
deliverd a buggy beta release. If I had been told that going into it
I could have made an educated decision. It took 6 months until it
was a functional device with version 2.0 of the firmware. If that
had been the starting point I would not be so annoyed with the
apperent lack of responce on issues that remain.
There has been a lot of comments on the TTS issue so lets see that
fixed. Does GWMicro have no pull with HIMS?
Get HIMS to tell us what and when. Are wi goitn to get a 2.2 this
year or a 3.0 that fixes Bluetoot and adds DRM WMA?
Is GWMicro passing on our fustration to HIMS? FYI I sent an e-mail
direct to HIMS and they did not reply. So perhaps GWMicro has no
more pull with HIMS than individual clients. THis in itself is
reason not to buy a Bookscence.
Thanks
Tom
At 08:04 AM 8/19/2010, Christopher Chaltain wrote:
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
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Micro or the BookSense, then please consider sending your message to
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