On 5/1/12 9:14 AM, BillW50 wrote:
<snip>
Not snipping my meandering reply just made this reply soooooooo long! LOL
Yes perfectly! Now giving somebody a list of other newsreaders without
giving more information is very dangerous and misleading IMHO.
I'd generally disagree with you here, Bill. Just because "you" (generic
you, not BillW50 specifically) don't know anything about a particular
program is no reason *not* to tell the person asking the question those
other programs exist. It's the other person's responsibility to
determine if the other software meets their needs. Things about a
particular program that do not appeal to you may be something the other
person is looking for.
Simply calling one or more programs "crap" simply reflects negatively on
you, especially if the other person discovers they like the program.
And if that happens, what do you think the odds are that person will pay
any attention to any other comment you make?
As I used
to listen to this advice and it has harmed me very much over the many
years and wasted a lot of my time. And the hell with my problems, I am
just trying to stop it from happening to others. And that is my beef.
I used to take recommendations/comments I read online somewhere as
"gospel". I don't anymore. I've learned to simply check those things
out and make my own decisions. And from then on, I had less faith the
source of the information.
For example, people often mention Thunderbird in such a list to replace
OE or WLM. But they don't tell you things that the view to see replies
to your posts is missing. Nor do they tell you that Thunderbird for
whatever reason doesn't see all of the messages. I don't know, something
like 1% just isn't shown. And I didn't know this about Thunderbird for
the past 6 years or so. Don't you think something like this is worth
mentioning? So somebody doesn't waste 6+ years of their life until they
finally figure it out? I think it is very important to mention things
like this.
As you can tell from my sig or viewing the message source, I use
Thunderbird. I used to use OE, and Outlook 2003 and 2007.
But I like the idea of one program for both email and newsgroups, and
Outlook 2003 & 2007 doesn't do that natively, IIRC. I did take a look
at Agent before switching to the Mac, and I also found it hard to figure
out. But, I won't tell someone it's crap for at least two reasons.
One, I didn't stick with it long enough to find out if my initial
impression of the program was correct, for me. It may have worked out
that once I knew more about the program, I may have liked it. And two,
what is right for me is not necessarily right for someone else.
So I tell them of the other programs I know about, but don't denigrate
them by calling them "crap". I may tell them why *I* didn't like it,
but they should try them for themselves and make their own decisions.
TB is definitely not perfect, and doesn't offer some of the features you
want. But for me, the pluses outweigh the minuses, at least for the
moment. <grin>
I will say this, Bill, if you advocate for a feature in a program that
breaks agreed upon standards and/or rules, then you are in the wrong.
What you should be doing is advocating for a change in the standards
and/or rules.
People who give a list of alternative newsreaders are often not experts
with any newsreader. Okay they might know one or two fairly well. But
the only person that should be doing the recommending is somebody with
lots of experience with many newsreaders. Otherwise you are just wasting
the OP time.
Anymore, I seriously doubt there are any individuals that are "experts"
in all programs of any type. A user simply needs to do their own
testing, decide for themselves by using the program in a manner they
want to use the program, and never put 100% faith in anything anyone
says. The person making those statements, no matter how knowledgeable,
may not know the one or two crucial answers the user needs to know.
I'm no technical expert on anything about computers, just used them
since the early '80's. A few months ago, I qualified for free MS tech
support with a problem, and the problem escalated all the way to an
engineering team. After about 3 weeks, they gave up.
But I fixed it! LOL
What I had that they didn't, was user experience with that computer.
After watching them test my computer remotely, collect logs and reports,
and repeat this a few times, I thought about what I'd seen and said
"What if?" Long story short, I changed the network card and the problem
was solved.
So, there is a serious danger to any poster who says such and such is
junk, and is adamant about that.
You mentioned that quoting a 7 year old article doesn't count. If things
are the same, sure it counts.Did Agent do anything to change any of
this? I haven't seen Agent addressed this at all. But Agent wouldn't be
Agent if they made it easy for a newbie to use, now would it? As that
isn't what Agent is all about. Of course that article counts. Just like
if somebody directs the OP to a Windows KB article about Windows 2000
that the fix also works for under Windows 7.
No, it doesn't. Early Corvairs were "crap", pretty much, but by the end
of the model's run, all issues had been fixed, yet the bad rap remained.
And that didn't seem to matter to some, the Corvair would always be a
piece of crap. Ralph Nader has left me with the impression he is one of
those for whom the Corvair could never be fixed.
Quoting a 7 year old article, about a version no longer available, falls
into a similar category. At this point, I don't think it will make any
difference what Agent does, you aren't going to like it.
And I've seen MS support folks telling others asking for help to use an
old article that, according to the article, only applies to Win 98,
2000, XP. But it works for Win Vista and 7. In which case, MS should
update the old article with that information. And you can still find
that happening if you simply do a web search on a problem.
Another bad idea about throwing out a list of alternative readers to
somebody that is accustom to OE/WLM, is that one can easily figure out
how to use them without reading a manual.
Don't get me started on the lack of proper documentation, it's one of my
personal peeves, and applies to all new software. Online documentation
is equally bad. Documentation that goes with current software is just
plain.......... crap! <--- LOL, I just couldn't resist that!
Whether it is easy to figure out how to use something completely depends
on the user. Some find Windows easy to use and understand, but can't
figure a d**n thing out on a Mac. And the reverse is also true. So
that's a bogus argument, IMO.
I personally after using
dozens of readers over the years never found another GUI reader to be as
easy to use.
But that's your personal opinion, Bill, and that's perfectly fine. But
it may not be opinion of a new user. It's wrong to label any software
or product "crap" just because you don't like it. That's a subjective
opinion. Simply say why you don't like that software or product, and
tell the user to try it themselves and make their own decision.
And some of them will take years to get accustom too. And
there is a chance that even years later after using something else, they
still miss their old OE/WLM anyway (but others told them to quit using
them). I see such posts all of the time in newsgroups.
That's always going to happen, regardless of the product. I still miss
some Atari features and it's OS, and I still use a couple of 20+ year
old sound system components because there are no replacements for the
things they do. But it doesn't make the new stuff crap. Just stuff I
don't like.
--
Ken
Mac OS X 10.6.8
Firefox 12.0
Thunderbird 12.0.1
LibreOffice 3.5.2.2
