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Subject: Re: More doubts with gandalf

Author: Ed Schröder

Date: 14:52:47 02/26/01

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On February 26, 2001 at 15:58:15, Fernando Villegas wrote:

>Hi Ed:
>Now let me put all this discussion under the light of just a customer, not a
>programmer or beta tester or computer geek. What I said to Mogens and what I
>insist to be the truth in practical terms is this: when you purchase a program
>you expect to get get a good perfomance in the current hardware available, with
>the current version available -and sold, do not forget that- and with normal
>time settings. If you do not get that reasonable minimun, you feel offset. I not
>doubt that actual gandalf version running in a very fast processor is good
>enough to get an excellent position in the tournament, that is a matter of fact,
>but at the same time  I cannot be happy with the commercial version for which I
>paid around 30 bucks because is not only somewhat inferior, but a lot inferior
>to the actual one in Paderborn. Hey, Ed: when you receive a Cd without an easy
>way to install, without a good booklet, without a decent gui and without the
>normal things you expect from something that is sold and, besides, as a crowning
>achievement, you does not get a game of the quality and strenght you expect, you
>can imagine you cannot feel great. It is not an answer to say that it is an
>"experimental" thing made by amateurs as if because of that you must take it all
>as a Godsend. I will never complain of Comet because it is given for free, even
>if I believe -I do not- it is full of shortcomings, but the day Ulrich would
>sell it, I would ask him the minimal standard of quality of these days. In this,
>I believe, the Gandalf people failed. I was short of feeling cheated, to say it
>straight. I do not say they tried to cheat nobody, but they were in a hurry to
>put his thing in the market, but when you are commercial you cannot be in a
>hurry; you must take care that you are not going to deliver a less than adequate
>product. I hope they will fix this mistake - because it is a mistake- sooner or
>later. In fact, the general and sad thing about all this is this: there are too
>many people that are in a hurry and deliver his stuff too soon as if the world
>was going to end tomorrow and they think if they does not get his share of
>reputation by now, then they will never get it. So they lack patience and care
>and clearly, as an add-on, they give a shit for people like me that is not
>available to become a hacker. If you take money from the public, you must think
>in the public and not only in your geek friends. But they forget that and when
>complains comes, they look at you as if you was a despicable computer ignorant,
>a guy that is not capable to give a full and detailed list of your problems, but
>only "complain". Is like if you go to the car seller to say him your new brand
>car does not run and they would tell you "hey, have you performed a full
>examination of how the car is made? No? Then Come again with an enginering
>evaluation and do not bother us before that..."
>Cheers
>Fernando


Hi Fernando,

What can I say? It is hard for me to comment this, first I don't own
Gandalf so I don't have an opinion secondly I feel I am not the right
person to judge Gandalf.  What I do know is that criticism isn't such
a bad thing, without criticism of others Rebel would certainly play
weaker. The latter is not an invitation :)

Ed




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