Path: utzoo!yunexus!geac!syntron!jtsv16!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!amdcad!ames!haven!uvaarpa!mcnc!duke!romeo!hsg
From: hsg@romeo.cs.duke.edu (Henry Greenside)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.neural-nets
Subject: Re: MacBrain
Summary: Don't buy MacBrain
Message-ID: <12685@duke.cs.duke.edu>
Date: 25 Oct 88 19:48:31 GMT
Article-I.D.: duke.12685
References: <779@epistemi.ed.ac.uk> <1235@astroatc.UUCP> <515@tank.uchicago.edu>
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I would recommend against anyone purchasing MacBrain.
Several copies were purchased here at Duke University
for evaluation.  MacBrain had a reasonable mouse
interface for placing neurons and for linking neurons,
and had built-in rules for learning such as the
delta-rule, back-propagation, and the Boltzmann
machine. There was no language that allowed complicated
networks to be set up, so drawing and linking more than
about ten neurons was tedious and impractical. The
program is slow, making scaling studies also impractical.

The worst part of the product was that it was extremely
buggy and many advertised features had not been
implemented.  Repeated calls to the makers of MacBrain
at Neuronics led to promises that bug-free versions
would be available any day now, but they never arrived.
Neuronics also refused to refund our money.

Try another product from more trustworthy company.

	Henry Greenside