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Text File | 1995-10-03 | 15.0 KB | 362 lines

EMC Phase1 Customer Comments, Suggestions and Feedback The following text file has been compiled to answer the comments, suggestions and feedback that we received from some our Phase1 customers. -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- Carl Gamble and the guys from Optonica Limited Rated the Phase 1 CD at 93% COMMENT: "The ONLY criticism that we could come up with was that the images do not have 24 bit versions included." RESPONSE: Yes, a fair point but, in all honesty we really didn't think that 24 bit versions of the images were needed. Our market research concluded that the majority of our established EMC PD/Shareware library customers (over 14,000) have relatively low end Amiga systems. We have found that the average system used by our customers consists of an A1200 with around 6mb of ram, a relatively small hard drive, a CD drive and perhaps an accelerator. A fair percentage of our customers are still using WB1.3 based machines!What's the point in filling the CDs up with 24 bit files that only a small percentage of our customer can make any use of? Furthermore, the EMC PHASE 1, 2 & 3 CD's are directed towards Amiga desktop publishers and video enthusiasts and to be honest unless these users have some pretty impressive hardware they can't really make full use of 24 bit images! A great proportion of the images on PHASE 1 originated as 256 colour GIFs and although, I suppose, we could have quite easily loaded these images into AdPro and saved them out as 24 bit files (like some companies do) just to pad the CD out, but we felt that this would defeat the purpose and not offer our customers very good value for money. -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- Mr. P. J. Richards from Kent COMMENT: Phoned us up wanting to say that he assumed that PHASE 1 would be have copied what he needed to Ram: (like the Aminet CDs) He felt that the Aminet CDs structure was excellent (so do we!) He aslo felt that the PHASE 1 CD structure was too complex and made life overly complicated to find a particular piece of clipart. RESPONSE: We explained that the Aminet CDs were a completely different product and although the Aminet disk operation was good it wouldn't really work with the EMC CDs. To take the example, if you wanted a piece of clipart from PHASE 1 of a male office worker...using Aminet's method of operation it would copy over 2 megabytes of clipart to Ram: How many people have that much memory spare after loading their system, their DTP package and probably a file management program? Furthermore, the files on PHASE 1 are not archived, so we didn't really see the point of this type of operation. We did a lot of research and spent a lot of time thinking about the PHASE 1 layout and we sincerely feel that once you are used to the method we adopted you will find it easy to use! -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- David Duncan from Cheshire Rated the Phase 1 CD at 83% COMMENT: His registration can suggested that a) we added some colour to the icon and b) we centralised text in ALL readme and text files. RESPONSE: a) Yes, a fair comment Duncan! We assume that you mean adding colour to the text & preview icons? We had considered even using Magic WB icons but, some people don't use MagicWB and the result would be that the icons would look crap on standard machines! We agree that, maybe, our text and preview etc. icons look drab and boring but, you must admit that they are all uniform and they do look the same on all Amigas. After all we had to cater for customers using Amigas of all configurations. b) Centralise the text to what specifications? There are so many configurations of Amigas out there, and Workbench even has the option to use a different default font. With this in mind I'm sure you appreciate the fact that it's a little difficult to create a text file that will look good on all machines. To give you an example...People using the Picasso card can have a workbench that is 1280, or more, pixels wide. This basically means that they have double the normal screen width, so if we had formatted the text files, for example, to these specifications and used carriage returns the results would have looked good to Picasso users but would have looked a complete mess to everybody else! -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- Kenneth Packard from County Durham Rated the Phase 1 CD at 93% COMMENT: His registration card requested pictures of Film and Pop stars on our future CD releases RESPONSE: Your wishes have been granted...you'll find just over 29 mbs of these images on EMC Phase 2 -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- Neil Adams from Norfolk Rated the Phase 1 CD at 97.5% COMMENT: Easy file mover such as is on the Weird Science CD, for easy movement of fonts etc. into the desired drawers. RESPONSE: Yes Neil, I guess this is a good idea. To be honest we had originally thought of this, but we genuinely feel that most Amiga users nowadays have Directory Opus, especially since version 4 was given away on a CU Amiga coverdisk! We could include something like the shareware directory utility DirWorks on the Phase2 & CDs but we feel that it could prove potentially destructive to some users since they could quite easily start deleting important files from their systems. -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- G.W. Thompson from Tyne & Wear Rated the Phase 1 CD at 92.5% COMMENT: a) The organisation and layout of directories, along with the illustrated index for each font or illustration could not be bettered, and serves as an example for other companies to follow. b) The only reason you didn't get top marks for contents was because I found some examples of duplication. Not many I admit, but when the standard you set for the rest of the disc was so high I felt I had to mark you down in that area. c) As for any suggestions for future releases, all I can say is more of the same please! d) Don't worry about the cover, it's the contents that count! RESPONSE: a) Not much can be said concerning this comment...our press release (prior to the Phase 1 launch) stated "We genuinely feel that the current CD situation stinks and we at EMC are aiming to set the standard on which all CDs on the Amiga will be judged" I guess that we lived up to our claim! b) Yes, I admit that a few seemed to have slipped through the net and I honestly don't have an excuse except to say that we were processing in excess of 5 gigabytes of data and it was virtually impossible to filter all duplicates out. However, you must appreciate the fact that this minor duplication was unintentional, unlike some other companies, who duplicate entire directories of data on the same CDs. c) I'm sure you really don't mean that literally! hehehe No seriously, I'm sure that you'll be happy with this (EMC-Phase2) and the forthcoming EMC-Phase3 CD. d) Yes, we realise that this is true, but we invested a great deal of time (and heaps of money) into this CD and we just wanted everything to be right. It was really soul destroying to have been let down at the last hurdle! -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- S. Fredericks from Essex Rated the Phase 1 CD at 100% COMMENT: Great CD, can't wait to receive the others. It's guys like you that make owning an Amiga worthwhile! RESPONSE: How could we possibly comment on this? except for saying thanks! -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- Gary Farr from Kent Rated the Phase 1 CD at 85% COMMENT: More font previews grouped on a single page! RESPONSE: I'm not totally sure what you mean here, but I'm assuming that you want more than one font on the same font preview screen. I can't really see the point of this since it seems to us that the whole idea on having a font preview is to preview a font! If for example, we had put two different fonts, one called Fred and the other called Wilma, on the same preview screen...where would we have put the actual preview picture file? In Fred's font drawer or in Wilma's font drawer? If we had put the same preview, of two different fonts, in both directories, this would have probably caused more confusion than it was worth! -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- Craig Stevens from Sterlingshire Rated the Phase 1 CD at 97.5% COMMENT: I have a great number of Amiga CDs and to be truthful your Phase 1 CD is easily the best! I sincerely hope that the other CD producers and developers out there will sit up, take notice and hopefully start producing CDs that can match the quality that Phase 1 has achieved. Well done EMC! Keep up the good work! The only reason that I have not given the Phase 1 CD full marks is because mine arrived with a broken case! RESPONSE: What can I say Craig? Our press releases for Phase 1,2 & 3 basic- ally said what we felt about the current Amiga CD situation (please see the Welcome! text file on this & Phase1 CD) We feel that there are far too many companies out there that are just interested in ripping their customers off! These companies just seem to shovel TOTAL AND UTTER CRAP from one CD to another with very little thought or organisation! I'm sorry about the broken CD case, I can assure you that you CD left here in perfect condition. -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- Paul Andrews from Lancashire Rated the Phase 1 CD at 92.5% COMMENT: Phase 1 is absolutely superb, please put my name down for Phase2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9... I have been a customer of yours for quite a while now and your software has consistently been of excellent quality. The Phase 1 CD is literally the "icing on the cake" RESPONSE: Don't get carried away with your ordering, we haven't even thought about Phase 5 yet not to mention Phase 6, 7 etc., I guess that we probably have enough new material available to bring out Phase 5+ but you must consider development time, Phase 1 alone took the best part of 2 months to sort out. I guess that we could have just shoveled the data from out floppies to the CD but our reputation means an awful lot to us and we ARE NOT prepared to become CD "Shovelware" developers. Anyway Paul, A big thank you for your positive comments. -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- Alan Myers from Bedfordshire Rated the Phase 1 CD at 95% COMMENT: a) The fact that you seemed genuinely concerned about the printing error on the EMC Phase 1 CD says an awful lot about your company's commitment to quality. b) After spending much time delving into the inner workings and contents of EMC Phase1 I have come to the conclusion that you have produced an excellent CD, one which I honestly cannot fault. The reason that I haven't given EMC Phase 1 full marks is because I am leaving a little room to manoeuvre when judging/ grading EMC's Phase 2's registration card. RESPONSE: a) Yes, we were genuinely concerned about the Phase 1 CD's artwork error. We spent the best part of 3 weeks raging war on the CD production company and their printers. Although we weren't responsible we have admitted defeat and payed for a reprint. As a direct result of this, the CD production company have lost all our present and future business and we have shifted our business to a German company. Many of our Phase 1 CD customers have already said that it really doesn't matter (see G W Thompson's comments above) but, as far as we are concerned IT DID MATTER! b) Glad to hear that you were happy with EMC Phase 1 and I guess that we'll have to buck our ideas up if we want to gain your full marks with EMC Phase 2! hehehe -+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+- Well folks, that's about all I can manage to fit in here. Although we have already sold a great many Phase 1 CDs we have had VERY FEW registration cards sent back to us. You are all probably too busy having fun with the CD to find the time to send the registration card back! If you would like to see your name in "flashing lights" in the "Feedback" text file on the Phase 3 CD all I can say is... GET YOUR REGISTRATION CARDS BACK TO US AS FAST AS YOU CAN! End of file EMCPhase1.Feedback 3rd October 1995 Errol...E.M.Computergraphic