To those of you who have chosen to respond to my previous
post I have the following reply.

Patience is something I have in abundance but the fact of the
matter is more the a few Amiga hardware/software developers
have disappeared taking the money of loyal and patient
supporters with them without so much as a "thank you" or "I'm
sorry".

Deron has put himself in a position where he should do all he
can to assure his supporters that he will do the right thing by
them. And you don't do that by cashing someone's check and
sending them an e-mail to visit the secure site to download files
that are supposed to be there but aren't. If he can send an e-mail
telling me to go to the secure site he can also respond to my
e-mail keeping me updated on any problems or delays.

I would have had no problem with his HOLDING my check until
there was SOME product either sent to me or easily accessible.
And for those of you who have been waiting longer and have
nothing to show for it , I am taking deposits for lovely seaside
plots of land for you to build your dream home on.

All I'm saying is that SoftLogik is supposed to be a professional
company and that Deron should act the part. His actions to this
point have been totally irresponsible. It may not be his intention
to be deceptive, but his actions certainly give that impression. I
have been and continue to be a loyal SoftLogik supporter. All I
ask is that Deron shows a resonable amount of respect and
appreciation for our making it possible for him to make a decent
living doing something he obviously loves. For all I know by his
actions he has done just as Amazing Amiga did - take the money
of trusting supporters and disappeared into the night without a
word. The very least Deron could have done was to respond and
let me know that I will get what was promised.

Sincerely,

David L. Goolsby

on 21/5/00 4:14 PM, D G at dgoolsby@ix.netcom.com wrote:

> To those of you who have chosen to respond to my previous
> post I have the following reply.
>
> Patience is something I have in abundance but the fact of the
> matter is more the a few Amiga hardware/software developers
> have disappeared taking the money of loyal and patient
> supporters with them without so much as a "thank you" or "I'm
> sorry".
>
> Deron has put himself in a position where he should do all he
> can to assure his supporters that he will do the right thing by
> them. And you don't do that by cashing someone's check and
> sending them an e-mail to visit the secure site to download files
> that are supposed to be there but aren't. If he can send an e-mail
> telling me to go to the secure site he can also respond to my
> e-mail keeping me updated on any problems or delays.
>
> I would have had no problem with his HOLDING my check until
> there was SOME product either sent to me or easily accessible.
> And for those of you who have been waiting longer and have
> nothing to show for it , I am taking deposits for lovely seaside
> plots of land for you to build your dream home on.
>
> All I'm saying is that SoftLogik is supposed to be a professional
> company and that Deron should act the part. His actions to this
> point have been totally irresponsible. It may not be his intention
> to be deceptive, but his actions certainly give that impression. I
> have been and continue to be a loyal SoftLogik supporter. All I
> ask is that Deron shows a resonable amount of respect and
> appreciation for our making it possible for him to make a decent
> living doing something he obviously loves. For all I know by his
> actions he has done just as Amazing Amiga did - take the money
> of trusting supporters and disappeared into the night without a
> word. The very least Deron could have done was to respond and
> let me know that I will get what was promised.

Sorry about posting the above in it's entirety, but for the sake of clarity
I didn't want to truncate it.

I've been lurking on the lists for some time now. I say lurking as I'm more
a spectator that an active participant these day, although I've been a
Pagestream user since 2.0 Atari.

Over the last year or so, I've been unable to wait for issues important to
me (but probably less so to you others) to be resolved in the Mac version
The cost of purchasing other software balanced against loss of chargeable
work makes shifting platform a simple choice and while I still have
Pagestream (Mac) and a number of designs on it, no new layouts are done on
Pagestream. We mainly use Illustrator (2 licences), Freehand and In Design.
I'd love to see Deron continue to evolve Pagestream but would be unlikely to
move back to it for mainstream, having made the effort to shift away.

The issues presently being discussed here to a fair degree mirror debates
going on in other lists I subscribe to. A current similar theme is a small
software house who were under pressure from competition and user base to
release an update. They did, probably prematurely. Then they got roasted
for releasing an unstable product. Then they got roasted for not fixing it
fast enough. Interesting thing was, the upgrade they released was the first
chargeable update in some time and I really can't fathom how they managed to
voiding charging for so long and stay in business. In spite of the fact
that it was the first chargeable update in some time, some people were less
than impressed and responded quite vocally.

At the end of the day, the speed of new feature product development, speed
of bug fix releases and speed of customer query response is dictated by
resources. This in turn is dictated by funding, pure and simple!
Pagestream is , feature wise, great value for money - probably too great. I
suspect most on this list would think likewise. If Deron would charge more
so he could allocate more resource, I might still be running Pagestream on a
daily basis. There's no such thing as a 'free ride'. You either pay up
front, in cash, or on the 'drip feed', by way of tolerating slower responses
and such like. It's really a question of which is more important to you.
Parting with cash, or suffering a few delays and setbacks. Obviously, I've
cast my vote. I think it's time for some reassessment of what is
anticipated versus what it's worth and it may be to get what you want you
have to part with a bit more. At the end of the day, Deron's got to eat,
pay insurance and such like.

I don't mean this as a personal attack on anyone, merely something for
everyone to reflect on before getting too upset with constant delays. I'm
sure Deron's going as fast as he can and doing everything he can. I have no
doubt of the guy's honesty and integrity. If he seems to be functioning at
a less than desired level of responsiveness, I suggest we all need to look
within ourselves and reflect on the realism of our expectations.

Regards to all

Phil Walding

Hello Phil

On 21-May-00, you wrote:

> resources. This in turn is dictated by funding, pure and simple!
> Pagestream is , feature wise, great value for money - probably too great.
> I suspect most on this list would think likewise. If Deron would charge
> more so he could allocate more resource, I might still be running
> Pagestream on a daily basis. There's no such thing as a 'free ride'. You
> either pay up front, in cash, or on the 'drip feed', by way of tolerating
> slower responses and such like. It's really a question of which is more
> important to you. Parting with cash, or suffering a few delays and

I agree. When pagestream 3.0 was released SoftLogik was a little larger
outfit. There were problems with it (the project of completely rewriting
PgS took longer than Deron thought) and that ticked a lot of customers off.
Things have slimmed down (although I thought he had managed to pick up a
secretary again, maybe not) and actually PgS 4.0 is coming along better
than 3.0 did -- with fewer resources (admittedly it isn't a complete
rewrite, but he is now supporting *three* platforms).

Although there are some obvious benefits to SL (and then the customers) to
raising the price of pagestream, determining a good price is more
complicated than that. I don't have any numbers, but I believe Deron said
at one time that he had more *pre-orders* for the Mac version than amiga
customers. Same may well hold true for windows. The only reason I can tell
we're still being supported is that he likes doing so. And he has pricing
pressure in the windows market (and quite possibly the mac as well).
Although there is no competition on the amiga, on windows there are
numerous low grade "DTP" software packages and he doesn't have the
reputation of Quark to justify their pricing. It will take some good
reviews and then some to *really* break into the windows market.

I would be willing to pay more for pagestream and pre-ordered 4.0 a long
time ago, gambling that my support might help keep SL alive long enough to
make it :/. I'm glad to see he's still around. But I can just hear the
outcry if PgS Amiga became more expensive to justify supporting the smaller
market and PgS Windows didn't because he couldn't stay competitive if he
did.

Incidentally, one (although by far not the only ;^) reason I favor SL doing
a port to linux is because there really *isn't* any competition there. And
despite how many capitalism apologists like to say linux == free and no
linux user will pay for software, its amazing how many small businesses are
able to pay their way (Photogenics comes to mind, my understanding is that
Paul Nolan is already making more money there than he did on amiga) and
larger businesses as well (Corel, for one). Now might not be the time (PgS
Windows needs to be *finished*, not just have a 4.0 designation), but I
personally don't think that the lack of free/open source DTP on linux means
that there isn't a large number of linux users who would pay to have that
capability on that os. (Yes, WINE might do the trick with PgS, but with
this big and complicated of a program I wouldn't want to bet on it.)

Regards
--
:: Tim Doty
 
drakki@rollanet.org
tdoty@umr.edu
http://www.rollanet.org/~drakki
pgp public key available on request

5/21/00 9:18 AM

> I agree. When pagestream 3.0 was released SoftLogik was a little larger
> outfit. There were problems with it (the project of completely rewriting
> PgS took longer than Deron thought) and that ticked a lot of customers off.
> Things have slimmed down (although I thought he had managed to pick up a
> secretary again, maybe not) and actually PgS 4.0 is coming along better
> than 3.0 did -- with fewer resources (admittedly it isn't a complete
> rewrite, but he is now supporting *three* platforms).

I was a PageStream user when I was an Atari owner and have stuck with
PageStream on the Mac. I still feel more comfortable using it than others I
have tried. At least I see slow but steady improvements.

Now, WHERE is that 5/8/00 release 6 for Mac?

Ken
***************************************
Ken and Chris Hulet
Engineering Services Co.
PO Box 4
Blanchardville, WI 53516

Phone 608.523.ESCO(3726)
FAX 608.523.3727
http://www.revolutionearth.com
esco@revolutionearth.com

Building Science Consulting
Renewable Energy Equipment
***************************************
Plan on attending Solar2000 fair and conference
June 16-21, 2000 in Madison

Hey there, Phil

On 21-May-00, Phil wrote:

> I don't mean this as a personal attack on anyone, merely something
for
> everyone to reflect on before getting too upset with constant delays.
I'm
> sure Deron's going as fast as he can and doing everything he can. I
have no
> doubt of the guy's honesty and integrity. If he seems to be
functioning at
> a less than desired level of responsiveness, I suggest we all need to
look
> within ourselves and reflect on the realism of our expectations.

Exactly so, Phil. And people should remember that no one can work 24
hours a day 7 days a week. Furthermore, everyone -- even developers --
must spend time on other interests or they will burn out. So folks
should not be prodding Deron or other Amiga developers to put more time
into their favorite projects.

Regards
--
DAVID L. STEVENS - dstevens@cityscape.net - Springfield, IL USA
TEAM AMIGA - Jay Miner Society - SPUG Computer Club

***Sevareid's Rule: "The chief cause of problems is solutions."
***

Hello D G on 21-May-00 05:14:36 you said

>Patience is something I have in abundance but the fact of the
>matter is more the a few Amiga hardware/software developers
>have disappeared taking the money of loyal and patient
>supporters with them without so much as a "thank you" or "I'm
>sorry".

Well, Deron ISN'T one of them. I've just checked my PageStream4 downloads
drawer and although I didn't always download every update I have the following
Amiga PGS4 uploads successfully made available by him over the past 16
months:-

PGS4 12 Jan 99
40a2 28 Feb 99
40b5 18 Jul 99
40b7 15 Aug 99
40b8 2 Sep 99
40R1 6 Nov 99
40R2 25 Nov 99
40R4 12 Mar 00
40R5nh 8 Apr 00

Although Deron originally scheduled uploads for all three platforms in
quick succession there were problems with his ISP and he had to make a change.

The PC version has been uploaded as I downloaded all 10 Mb of it last weekend
but if he is spending time replying to emails then he is not 'finishing off'
the version that he wants to upload for us all. Trust the man. He has stuck
with us through thick and thin (literally) and is still delivering.

The trouble with human nature is that you always underestimate the time it
takes to complete a task you have never done before! I used to take $5 off
factory managers around the world time and time again when I visited them
because they made this mistake!!

Tony Cooke *_/Team AMIGA/_* Wirenet
A4000 CyberStormIII 60/50 SCSI, PicassoIV, MFCIII,
HP Laserjet 4P, Stylus 600, 21" ADI Microscan 6G+,
For *_Cavies_* or */Guinea Pigs/*
http://www.vivamiga.u-net.com
Murphy was an optimist