[WardY]

I use both Bonsai and DayNotez as TOOLS to help me get my work (and life) done quicker and (hopefully) better. To keep up with revisions and advances I subscribe to a bunch of discussion groups which are mostly these days yahoo groups. The messages arrive in my eMail box and are automatically sorted with the Outlook Rules into individual mail boxes by subject (product in this case) and I can scan the messages and keep up with things as part of my routine message handling when I have time during the day.

Long ago most manufacturer's used their own message boards (like this one) that requires you to take the time to go on the net and log into the particular board and then navigate your way around clumisly since each board has different menus and navigation procedures. It takes a LOT more time than the almost universal Yahoo.Group message approach.

I set up for mail notification thinking I would receive the individual messages the same as with other groups ... NOPE, all I get are emails that someone has posted a message here on the board; in the same time I've read the notice, I could have read the message. Now I have to come to the web if I want to see the message (yes, you've given me a little link to click on. Sorry, but this is not efficient and your products just aren't important enough to me to warrant the time and effort to monitor this board. Thankfully your products are well designed and mature so I don't need to track the messages ... otherwise I would be returning to ShadowPlan which does use Yahoo.Group and makes much more efficient use of my time.

Interestingly I'm making the switch from SP to Bonsai because of the complexity and learning time required by SP, although it has several features including tags which make it more useful for my work than Bonsai. Now the complexity and participation time of your message board have made me regret my decision. There's an excellent chance that I'm going to rethink my decision and return to SP because of the time savings of their way of handling messages (and the excellent and timely interactions with the programmer/owner).

Anyway, before vanishing into the night, I wanted to take the time to tell you why I'm probably leaving as a user. I have cancelled my notice registrations in all the Areas so, hopefully, I'll quit receiving all those daily notices that contain no messages or useful information.

[plaid]

There is a yahoo group. There isn't much discussion there, but someone usually posts when there has been a new release.

http://groups.yahoo....i_and_DayNotez/

[StuGib]

To be fair, as someone that has also used and participated in both Bonsai and Shadow discussions and testing, Natara and CodeJedi do operate differently IMO, and this is reflected in the type of usage of their respective groups. Albeit it's been a year or two since I've used Shadow as my main outliner.

Jeff (CodeJedi) and Shadow Plan tends to be in a constant state of development - there's always something (desktop or handheld) in beta, and always new user problems and requests that always seem to discussed at length and are often squeezed into the development in some way. This leads in some way to more of a 'group' feeling in the e-mail list, and that Shadow is almost a team-effort between Jeff and his user base, with Jeff acting as a guiding hand and working within the constraints he has as a one-man band (or machine some might say!).

Natara are equally responsive IME, but do operate more as a traditional software company. They are always helpful in fixing problems, or responding to requests, but if requests for new features come up it's often met with a 'thanks for the suggestion, we'll add it to the list'. Nothing wrong with that - I know how much time Jeff (CodeJedi) dedicates to answering his hundreds of e-mails, and that's time Natara prefer to dedicate to development and fixing code than discussing the pros and cons of every idea. Similarly with the software development, there can often be months of relative inactivity on the boards, until suddenly the beta boards flash into life with a nearly-complete release. Bonsai 4 reflects how they do listen and implement those feature requests that build up, and are open to suggestions when a beta is progress, but Natara (again IMO) tend to have a firmer idea of where they want to go with their products, rather than trying to implement every suggestion if they can.

Anyway, that's my theory on why the discussion groups are different and why I think the forums work in Natara's case i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif E-mails are better when there's regular updates and discussions going on, but online forums tend to be better for cross-referencing to past discussions or searching archives. I know Yahoo Groups has a web interface but I've always found it very poor as a search tool and slow when browing threads when you have to click through their advertising.

There's always room for improvement though! Just taking a look at the FuseTalk website (the forum software), it does offer some e-mail features - "FuseTalk features powerful E-mail based functionality. Users can subscribe to topics and categories and receive digest subscriptions daily. Forum Administrators can synchronize a category with a mailing list, or enable email posting so that users can follow a category by E-mail." Maybe that's something Natara could look into, or maybe RSS, or NNTP synchronisation? They could also use separate e-mail lists for announcements of new releases or beta programs starting, for those who wish to be kept up to date about all developments? I know some experienced users were left disappointed because they didn't notice the new Bonsai beta had started testing.

TBH, I did also initially miss the 'group feeling' when moving from Shadow to Bonsai, but in the end I selected the software I need software to help me get on with the job I'm paid to do, not to participate in someone else's business (even though I usually end up doing so during betas! i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif) In the end, why do you need to participate regularly in discussion groups if you've got stable software that does what you need?

Stuart

[WardY]

Excellent points Stu, and I agree. But the term "stable" is hard to apply to some poor product that has to work in somebody else's environment (Palm OS seems to be a constantly changing world of bugs) and with other publisher's products (Bonsai's linking and I'm now using Beyond Contacts to replace the built in functions which don't sync well with MS Outlook.

Email digests at least alert me to the chatter that something is happening that may require my attention. Having to sign in here periodically and manually scan the various areas to see if something new has happened is just not a procedure that fits into my work procedure. Your alternative of something like FuseTalk sounds like a area that the Natara folks should well investigate.

I understand your points about Jeff's eternal development to try to address each user's desires ... that's one of the main reasons I'm learning Bonsai; IMHO Jeff is approaching MS's route with Word in strangling SP with diverse features which don't address a single well defined goal. I'm pretty adept at ignoring their forums chatter about wants and great new features and just concentrating on issues that affect my usability.

and to Plaid ... I do subscribe to the Bonsai_and_DayNotez group at yahoo ... and it has about as little traffic as is possible. Too bad it doesn't mirror this board.

now ... back to productive work

[slwenglish]

Interesting points.

Funnily, though, I DO get a "group" feeling from the Natara forums - probably because Natara are pretty good at replying to all posts, and George has put in quite a bit of time to help me with a couple of installation problems (bugs) I found in the past.

Jeff (Shadow Plan) provides fantastically responsive support, considering he's a one man band, and particularly considering he's trying to support so many different desktop OS's all at the same time (Compare with DDH Software's slow support and upgrades for HanDBase). But I agree with Stuart - by trying to be responsive to all his forum members, Jeff's made Shadow Plan TOO flexible. I found myself spending too much time on tinkering and filter maintenance and too little time on doing the things in my Shadow Plan list, when really I could easily do all I wanted with the more limited options in Bonsai's filtering. That, and the support for multiple desktops meant that he's never managed to keep up with Natara for providing a slick desktop with features like colour and icons. I eventually moved over to Bonsai - I wish Jeff and his loyal user base well, though.

One more observation - Natara's support and forums are streaks ahead of the poor quality support I get from Palmone (more's the pity).

Stéph

[StuGib]

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Originally posted by: WardY
Excellent points Stu, and I agree. But the term "stable" is hard to apply to some poor product that has to work in somebody else's environment (Palm OS seems to be a constantly changing world of bugs) and with other publisher's products (Bonsai's linking and I'm now using Beyond Contacts to replace the built in functions which don't sync well with MS Outlook.

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Good point - some of the bugs I see reported raises my sympathies to George et al - e.g. icons printing upside down? Bizarre!! You're right, PalmOS is more susceptible to clashes between apps, even before hacks, system extensions, different OS versions, changing and undocumented APIs and databases, and user errors are taken into account!

Quote

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Originally posted by: WardY
Email digests at least alert me to the chatter that something is happening that may require my attention....Your alternative of something like FuseTalk sounds like a area that the Natara folks should well investigate.

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FuseTalk is the software currently being used for this forum, so hopefully it's just a case of turning an option on their end, or perhaps a small investment up to the next version?

Shadow's got some nice features, some of which I'd personally like to see in Bonsai, and other ideas I'd also like in, but at the end of the day, I would rather go without and have something that's usable, than have a 10-page options panel. That's why I squirm a little when some fairly obscure feature requests on here, when knocked back as not being of wide enough interest, get re-requested as 'just add it as another option'. I think Natara get the balance fairly right (apart from those great ideas of mine they haven't implemented yet i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif )

Stuart

[Pops]

Stumbled upon this thread after happened to check today/hot threads. I use only DayNotez and am pretty much a novice, but I, too, have really enjoyed reading through this thread thus far; thanks to each of you for enabling this user to learn just a bit more. When an app (such as Bonsai or Shadow Plan) has become a necessary tool for work purposes, it's easy to see (even if not completely understand all the ins & outs) why the things mentioned are so important to each of you!