From: johnm@cory.Berkeley.EDU (John D. Mitchell)
Subject: Re: AOL for help (was Re: GEOS and PostScript)
Summary: Sigh.
Organization: University of California, at Berkeley
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 22:38:29 GMT

In article <MHIRSCH.93Jan5113626@volkl.princeton.edu>
mhirsch@volkl.princeton.edu (Michael Hirsch) writes:
>>>>>> On Tue, 5 Jan 1993 12:02:17 GMT, johnm@cory.Berkeley.EDU (John D.
Mitchell) said:
>
>John> In article <Jan.5.05.04.27.1993.5618@pilot.njin.net>
>John> birchall@pilot.njin.net (Shag) writes:
>	[snip]
>>I would be very interested in learning
>>
>>a) the AOL addresses of the Georeps (since I _can_ e-mail them through the
>>   AOL <-> Internet e-mail gateway, without spending money that I don't have
>>   to begin with).
>
>John> As I tried to say a long while back when this was brought up...
>John> Please remember that the GeoReps are strictly *volunteers*.
>John> They ride herd over the various GeoWorks areas on AOL.  They
>John> aren't the answer people (though they end up doing an awful lot
>John> of that because they do know so much).
>	[snip]
>>c) whether GeoWorks has given any thought to providing some other sort of
>>   support (even just a UUCP e-mail drop would be better, for folks like me.
>
>John> At the current time, AOL is (still) the official online GeoWorks
>John> support forum.
>
>I don't get it.  First you say that GeoWorks does not supply any
>official suppoort on AOL, but rather the people there are volunteers
>working (presumably) on their own time.  Then you say that AOL is the
>official online support forum.

No. Read my words again.  I said that the *GeoReps* are strictly
volunteers.  There are a number of GeoWorks employees whose jobs involve
the maintenance, support, and whatever other things that they do to provide
support for GeoWorks products on AOL.

>Well, which is it?  From your second description I would say that Shag
>is right to be a tad miffed that the only online support costs $$.
[...]

GeoWorks has had a happy relationship with AOL since it was Berkeley
Softworks and AOL was Quantum in the Commodore GEOS days.  AOL is certainly
among the cheaper for-pay online services.  As I've said, I sympathize.  I
won't get any Compuserve/Genie/Prodigy/etc. accounts myself for the same
reasons.  It costs too much for what I'd use it/them for.   It would be
nice if AOL restructures their fees but who knows.  It would be nice for
GeoWorks to provide a 'free' support service.  But that costs money one way
or another.  Support costs a lot.  Again, we'll both have to wait and see
what the future brings.

>My impression is that the AOL forum is more than just a bunch of
>employees all of whom happen to spend time (and $) on AOL.  It seems
>pretty clear to me that they are encouraged to do so by GeoWorks (I'm
>willing to be corrected, though).  Until I find out otherwise, I will
>be annoyed along with Shag that GeoWorks isn't spending any time
>putting information out where I can read it.

My suggestion for you is to sign up for the free few hours of time that are
available to you as a GeoWorks customer on AOL and see for yourself.

>Surely GeoWorks has some bug fixes it could release.  Surely it has
>some frequently asked questions to which it knows the answers that it
>could publish electronically (that's what drdostip.zip was).  You told
>me once that there was a Dvorak keyboard driver on AOL but it has
>never migrated to internet (that I know of).  Remember all the hassles
>Rudy had trying to get us a copy of launchmaker and iconeditor?  If I
>were GeoWorks I would try to get them the widest distribution possible
>instead of rely on the trickle down effect.

I believe that both launchmaker and icondeditor are not products of
GeoWorks (but I could be mistaken :-).  Again, spend some time on AOL and
judge for yourself then.

As far as posting patches or other such things...  This discussion came up
a long while back and the answer's the same.  It's a big pain in the butt,
costs lots of money (in a plethora of ways) and isn't really the right
thing to do.  Try thinking about it like this... GeoWorks could spend the
time and money dealing with creating these patches, distributing them, and
supporting them.  Or it can spend that same energy in creating the next
version of the product (or new products or new/improved features...) and
making that new version more robust, more usable, more powerful, etc. and
come out that much sooner.  v2.0 exacerbates this problem because it's such
a major change from v1.x.  At some point it just made/makes no sense to
delay the main project by spending any energy on 'patches' to v1.x.

>Boy, that's long.  My point is that GeoWorks could do a lot more to
>get the information out to the public.  I don't mean to criticize
>John, I think he is doing a fine job here, I only mean to  criticize
>(constuctively, I hope) his employer.

And the biggest thing that it can do is to produce the incredibly awesome
software that will provide real utility to a lot of people.

Thanks for caring,
		John
		johnm@cory.Berkeley.EDU

P.S.	My opinions are mine (get your own).  GeoWorks speaks for itself.
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.pcgeos