Volunteerism is for charitable causes, not to further the goals of a for-profit business. I prefer to spend my charitable efforts in helping the disadvantaged here in the USA seek medical care and my philanthropic donations helping the local Symphony Orchestra (another gathering place for the perpetually property stricken -- the musicians). I do not see any volunteer work going to boost the bottom line of a company -- any company. Let me digress for a moment before resuming the software testing issue.
You have an opportunity to ensure that issues which are important to you are addressed prior to formal release of the program. Should you consider yourself a proficient user but not wish to participate then it is probably better not to complain about what results. Lots of other users took the time out amongst busy schedules to identify issues. I am not one of them as I was in total system overload at that stage, as a result I won't be bagging Altium as I was given the opportunity.
This is beyond volunteerism, it is subjecting the program to as wide as possible a test team, "who don't 'know' that you shouldn't do things in that order". This process benefits us all and is well beyond any company is capable of completing internally.
The reality of AD6 is that it has a large proportion of features that resulted from issues raised on the users forum this year. There still remain some bloody annoying & frustrating issues ( name a CAD system that doesn't have them...) but on the whole the level of support from Altium and accessibility to AD developers this year has been nothing short of spectacular. I have used the system for 16 years and would rate 2005 as the most encouraging yet although I must temper this by voicing the opinion that SP5 might have kept a few more happy customers. Having said this I don't know the state of the accounts and someone has to pay for all the new videos ;-)
> Harry, based on what you have said, I strongly suspect that you are one
of the beta testers. Yes, I know that the confidentiality agreement prevents you from disclosing that relationship, but it does not prevent you from listening and thinking. As you look back through all the traffic you have seen on the private beta tester forum that gave you direct access to developers and management at Altium, did you see anyone who had strong issues with the product and was willing/able to clearly and logically articulate them? It is my experience from companies other than Altium (no experience with Altium) that other than bug reports, such forums are populated mostly by believers who do not have much critical to say. This leads the management and the developers to think that everything they do is perfect and there are no real issues.
With all due respect, I would suggest that over the period the communication with Altium has been most "spirited". The difference is that it is conducted on a one to one basis with an intent to "drive home a point" to bring about a resolution, not in public to "score a point" with no regard to a resolution.
Personal experience in bug swatting has shown that unit testing and formal code walkthroughs are great for detecting problems , as are confrontational test teams. In the end there is no substitute for taking your code to a conference & putting it up on a projector, guaranteed to find a few more in the most embarrassing means possible. Beta testing helps. Good on the people that help...
Cheers & a very happy New Year to all!! Don ____________________________________________________________ You are subscribed to the PEDA discussion forum To Post messages: mailto:[email protected] Unsubscribe and Other Options: http://techservinc.com/mailman/listinfo/peda_techservinc.com Browse or Search Old Archives (2001-2004): http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] Browse or Search Current Archives (2004-Current): http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]
