From: frampton@vicuna.ocunix.on.ca (Steve Frampton)
Newsgroups: comp.bbs.waffle
Subject: Re: Offline Readers - ENOUGH ALREADY!
Date: 8 Jan 93 04:48:56 GMT
Reply-To: frampton@vicuna.ocunix.on.ca
Followup-To: comp.bbs.waffle
Organization: Vicuna Systems, Kingston, Ontario, CANADA
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

stanley@skyking.OCE.ORST.EDU (John Stanley) writes:

> When the software runs without user action, why should there be a need
> for pull-down menus? Waffle will quite happily sign on, retrieve, etc.,
> without the user touching a button. I certainly don't expect any of my
> cron tasks to pop up a menu asking me what I want to do, for I expect
> that most of the time I will be nowhere near the machine to use any
> menus.

Oh man, you are really missing the point here.  What I am *trying* to
get through your thick skull is that the user wants to use his mouse
or press a function key, and retrieve all his mail.  Then another one
and out goes the contents of his outbox.  Another one to read his news.
Another one to keep a personal address book of frequently contacted
people.

> CIM is a rather different story, for, even were the main CompuServe
> software available to the general public, it would not run on a PC as
> does Waffle.

I'm not *talking* about _using_ the CIM software.  I'm talking about using
something *similar* to it.

> [re: 2 - 3 week configuration time] I certainly wouldn't. And I didn't 
> have to to get Waffle running, either.

I'm happy for you.  You're real smart, aren't you.  It didn't take me
that long either.  But I know of *quite a few* people who expressed an
interest in running Waffle, downloaded the software from my site, and
could *not* get things working without undue torture expressed by them,
and quite often not without assistance on my part.  Not everyone is as
saavy as you appear to be.

It took me about an entire evening to configure Waffle.  Then another
couple days to get everything working perfectly (cron, phone answering,
polling, etc.).  About a week to get things *real* nice -- external
commands, ANSI screens, etc.  I've been running it for a year, and see
nifty things all the time here on comp.bbs.waffle which I add as I come
across.

CIM, on the other hand, took me a total of 15 *minutes* to configure.
I would write all my messages off-line (saving $$$ in CompuServe's
case, but perhaps saving long-distance or the site's modem time in the
case with other similar front-ends), keep an address book of all my
contacts by nickname.  Select the system to call the appropriate site,
have all my messages sent to the site automatically with no user
intervention, retrieve all incoming mail if available, retrieve any
new forum (newsgroup) messages as required for later reading, perform
any file transfers I wanted, and then log off.  It was quite pretty,
as well.

Yes, Waffle is powerful.  But not everybody wants to run their own
site.  I wonder how long the people in the MIS department where I am 
employed would last if they told all their users that if they wanted to 
run payroll, or budgetary accounting, or SAS, or assessment, that they 
would simply have to go out and purchase their own VAX to run the apps,
but could use the MIS's VAX to store the data.

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