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Let's Play "Find the UI issues in the scanner software"
Today I received the Fujitsu ScanSnap fi-5110EOXM that I ordered (I couldn't pass up the $100 Macworld discount and the $50 rebate). The scanner is great; it scans to PDFs and doesn't make me look at their ugly user interface too much. However, I thought I'd point out the issues (first off I had to find the version of the software that was Intel native as the CD didn't have it and it wasn't readily available on their website:
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Product Version Numbers
The normal scheme of version numbering for products seems to work for most developers. Going from 1.x.x to 1.x.x+1 is a minor bug fix; going from 1.x.x to 1.x+1.x is maybe a few new features and bug fixes. In some cases, developers only charge for 1.x.x to 2.x.x updates which makes a lot of sense to me to differentiate the products. That's how I like to do things. Today I downloaded a new version of a freeware product I was using (I was using version 1.1.2) and when I downloaded the 1.2 version, was extremely surprised to find that it was now shareware ($34). While the developers said that they would be charging in the future, a minor version number update caught me off guard. Furthermore, they didn't provide release notes on what changed, but instead on first launch, I got an alert to buy it. I poked around for a few minutes and then reverted to the freeware version. I'm not opposed to developers making money, but they should have called it 2.0 and added some additional value to it (or charged money from the beginning). I'm a bit disappointed in this, but on the flip side, it reinforces my desire to write a new application based on ReceiptWallet.
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My take on Macworld
Now that Macworld is over and everyone and his dog has blogged about the good, the bad, and the ugly, I've decided to post my reactions. I had a chance to watch the keynote yesterday (no time last week as I was working a booth) and the one thing that came to my mind was iSnooze. So Apple announced AppleTV and the iPhone. I have no interest in the AppleTV as we don't watch many movies and any TV shows we watch, we just record on our TiVo. If I want to show pictures on my TV, I just turn on the TiVo desktop software and presto, I have it; I don't want to stream music to my TV as I just use my Squeezebox. So, the AppleTV buys me nothing (at least nothing I can see right now).
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Too good to be true?
The other day my wife and I went into the Sprint store to get her a new Motorola RAZR to replace her aging phone. The main feature is Bluetooth to use with the car kit. The salesman was real nice and unlike my last experience, I was willing to agree to the 2 year contract to get the reduced price on the phone. He asked where we worked and I told him that I was self employed and my wife worked for the school district; he asked to see if he could give us discounts. Hmmmm...he offered us 4 additional lines for the same base cost (because he'd slash 4 of our lines from $20/month to $10/month and add 4 more @ $10/month) and then he could give us a 15% discount per month. I normally wouldn't bite, but he assured me that it wouldn't affect my plan; he also said that my plan was very, very good, so that was reassurance that he knew how valuable my plan is. We'll see in a month or two the net result. I also have 4 crappy phones sitting on my shelf with activated lines that I have no plans on touching.