Need of Improvement

[Guest.Visitor]

We have been purchasing your quarterly updates of Midrange Computing on CD for some time now. We are thinking about cancelling our subscription and going elsewhere. The product has major failings and today, when we really needed to find an article for a project deadline, it just became apparent how BAD the product really is. We did not remember what month the article was written in and you would think that a person could do a search on all articles on an individual CD. Not the case. With Adobe Acrobat, I could only search ONE particular article at a time for keywords so we had to click September 1999, then click the article, search and then repeat the steps for each article for each month. Now that is just a stupid design of software that is useless! What we want, similiar to some of your competitors, is a full archived magazine search application that can find any keyword for any article since Midrange came into existence. Putting 3 months of aricles on one CD is stupid too, in my opinion. Take a cue from Ziff-Davis and include at least a full 5 year archive, not 3 months. One theme comes to mind while trying to use this software and that is usability testing. It must have never happened because the product is WEAK! Please provide one CD with MANY years of archived articles as well as a decent search engine. Mark Overstreet Fayette County Clerk's Office fccclerk@compuserve.com

[Guest.Visitor]

I recently acquired the ResourceCD/400 that you mentioned, and I'm NOT experiencing the shortcomings that you are referring to. I would suggest getting a newer copy of the product. I must admit that I haven't figure out how to view the corresponding source code to the articles. But, I have the feeling, that these must be transferred from their web site.

[Guest.Visitor]

Mr Overstreet (copy sent via email): Your posting on our Web forum has come to my attention. I am writing to inform you that your posting has made it clear to use that our installation and setup instructions on the ResourceCD need updating and enhancing. We will be working on that in the near future. However, please note that the ResourceCD does not contain the flaws you mentioned in your Web posting. a. It is possible that once you have attached the proper indexes (located on the disk), Acrobat will let you enter a text string one time and will return results for the entire catalog of Midrange Computing, AS/400 Network Expert, and AS/400 NetJava Expert articles that match that text string in a single window. You can then simply click to access as many of the articles as you want to see. To attach the indexes, make sure you are running the current version of the Acrobat Reader (it's on the disk), then Run Resource CD. Next, click on the Edit menu and choose Search, then Select Indexes. Click all three indexes and hit okay. Thereafter, when you search, you will get results from all issues of all publications. b. Please note that each quarterly update contains all the issues. In the case of MC, we go back to 1988 (before it was even named MC). The quarterly updates contain all the old information, plus the last three months of issues of MC, ANE, and ANJE. If you have any further questions or problems, I hope you won't hesitate to email or call me. Amy Newman Executive Managing Editor, Midrange Computing 760-931-8615; anewman@midrangecomputing.com

[Guest.Visitor]

Good response, Amy. I appreciated getting the facts straight on the CD. I don't subscribe anymore, because I just don't have time to use it all, but the original posting certainly did make me wonder about ever changing my mind. It's also great when dissatisfied customers do complain, because you get a chance to respond, so thanks to Mark, as well.