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From: pool@blake.acs.washington.edu (Jonathan Pool)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st,comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: SoftStyle Corp.
Keywords: ST, Spectre, MAC Sac
Message-ID: <556@blake.acs.washington.edu>
Date: 13 Jan 89 21:21:53 GMT
References: <2269@iscuva.ISCS.COM> <2992@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Reply-To: pool@blake.acs.washington.edu (Jonathan Pool)
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Lines: 22


Article 3490's rave review of SoftStyle isn't the whole story.  I bought
Epstart from them for my Epson FX-100 and SoftStyle was rarely helpful
in diagnosing the bugs and providing workarounds.  Then I bought their
Printworks, Epson version, which they had advertised as doing everything
Epstart did and more.  It was a disaster, and their advertisement was
false.  The print quality in "high" mode was much worse than just using
the built-in printer fonts.  Adjacent words even overlapped.  SoftStyle
either failed to reply to my letters documenting the problems or sent me
perfunctory notes evading the fact that they had falsely advertised the
product.  They claimed that someday they might make it do what I wanted.
SoftStyle has almost consistently behaved like the typical irresponsible
software vendor, not like those few vendors (e.g., Microsoft) that
actually reply to letters and calls, actually diagnose problems, and
actually fix bugs.  If anybody buys from SoftStyle before trying out a
demo version or seeing a sample of various print styles printed on the
very same printer you are going to use, you are asking for trouble.
(Another thing SoftStyle did was charge my credit card about a year
before shipping the product, and it didn't reverse the charge until
after about the 3rd request.)
--Disclaimer:  my only connection with SoftStyle is that I am a
--dissatisfied customer.