Usonian
Member
Registered: Feb 2000
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Posts: 165 |
quote:
Originally posted by marcus
I spoke to our contacts at Innogear yesterday and the Innodrive/MS work is proceding. The module James and I used at Comdex was a working version... (snip)
 This isn't directed at you personally, Marcus - I love Visor Central and I learn something new and useful about my Visor here just about every day, but one thing that has always struck me as strange is the apparent lengths to which Visor Central as an entity will go to to stick up for Innogear, a company that has clearly demonstrated its shortcomings to its customers and potential customers ever since it began pushing back the release date of the now-defunct Six-pack.
I still don't think the MiniJam was particularly deserving of last year's Springboard module of the year award, especially since it was released so long after the originally announced date and missing some of the features (storage for files other than MP3) that were used to tanatalize buyers. It may work well enough in its current incarnation, but given the cost of the 64 meg model vs its functionality it just doesn't add up to the simple, powerful, and very affordable utility offered by a module like the Handspring Backup module, or even the Handspring 8mb flash module. The only major difference I see between MiniJam and most of the numerous standalone MP3 players on the market is that the MiniJam uses the Visor's screen for display, and has a relatively small form factor.)
Springboard of the year is a subjective argument, of course, but with each new interview and announcement Innogear's hemming and hawing gets worse. For most people the company's announcement that they were finally pulling the plug on the Sixpack was the absolute last straw. Yes, the company announced the InnoDrive at Comdex, but they also said that the Sixpack would be shipping Q1 2001, and their current e-mail advertisements for the MiniJam clearly state that it has the capability to store e-books as well as music, which it does not. If InnoGear saw fit to disclose to Marcus that work continues on the InnoDrive/MS, then why not give the same story to John Q. Anonymous Customer?
Instead, InnoGear (not 3rd party) customer service representatives chose to disavow any knowledge of the product's existence at any stage of development, despite the fact that they know it was highlighted in an article on Visor Central last fall. It's neat that James and Marcus saw a working prototype at Comdex, but it doesn't amount to anything for most Visor Central readers.
I'm willing to give a company the benefit of the doubt; I wouldn't have bought my first Visor last February if I didn't think that Handspring was going to be able to deliver after the horror stories I read from the initial roll-out in late 1999. I think InnoGear has gotten quite a bit more of the benefit of the doubt from Visor Central than it deserves at this point. It has repeatedly failed to deliver products on time if at all, and now it's telling customers one thing and the staff of VisorCentral another (Free press, after all). Call it shifty or just plain incompetent, it's my humble opionion that InnoGear's track record should be allowed to speak for itself.
I'm not calling VC's journalistic integrity into question or anything... InnoGear just really ticks me off.
-Andy
[Edited by Usonian on 02-12-2001 at 08:31 PM]
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02-09-2001 10:35 PM
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