Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!sun-barr!rutgers!uwvax!umn-d-ub!umn-cs!davidli
From: davidli@umn-cs.CS.UMN.EDU (Dave Meile)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: A little detective work...
Message-ID: <15394@umn-cs.CS.UMN.EDU>
Date: 24 Aug 89 14:26:57 GMT
References: <890824.01342113.020170@SFA.CP6>
Reply-To: davidli@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu (Dave Meile)
Organization: Flying Taoist Graphics
Lines: 20

In article <890824.01342113.020170@SFA.CP6> Z4648252@SFAUSTIN.BITNET (Z4648252) writes:
>Moral of the story?  Don't condemn before you do some detective
>work.

The whole problem with this line of reasoning is that the average computer
user should not _have_ to troubleshoot his system for a period of several
hours (which is what you did) in order for a utility to run successfully on
the computer.  This is _especially_ true if the utility is not PD/Shareware
in nature.

While the example program you used (Squish, from Double Click), may work
wonders in disk compression, I personally wouldn't purchase it if there is
any likelihood that I'd have to spend several hours figuring out why my
system was bombing out, displaying weird characters, etc.

Much of the PD/Shareware software I take a look at gets tossed out for that
reason -- my time is more valuable as compared to the "possible" resource
savings for a given utility.

-- Dave Meile