|
PureBytes Links
Trading Reference Links
|
Ron and others:
I appreciate your candor also. As I stated in my first posting, I am not
here to defend anything we have done in our products.
Personally, I find any program crash as unacceptable. Hopefully, 7.02 will
be an improvement.
As for resource problems, we did identify and fix some resource leaks in the
program also. Beyond that, I can only hope that our products are acceptable
when it comes to "small enough" or "fast enough". Measuring the
acceptability of a program when it comes to speed and efficiency is very
imprecise. A real-time environment makes it more difficult. From the
beginning, we designed the real-time aspects of the program to have no
built-in limitations. The program operation is only limited by the demands
placed on it by the user combined with the number of updates being received
in real-time. This means that it is indeed possible to "max out" a system
by opening many charts and placing calculation intensive indicators on the
charts. Each machine will behave differently based on what the user is
trying to accomplish in conjunction with the number of real-time updates
required. If the demands on a machine are getting too intense, the software
will display a series of warnings about low resources or an inability to
keep up with the real-time data flow.
I do know that it is a never ending challenge to balance program speed,
efficiency and usability with the escalating demands of new and complex
features requested by our users. We are always attempting to improve our
software and I hope we can get it right also.
Ken Hunt
Programming Manager
Equis International
-----Original Message-----
From: Ron Scott [mailto:ron@xxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Friday, July 07, 2000 4:14 PM
To: metastock@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: Where in blazes is 7.02 ????
Ken-
I appreciate your candor. Fact of the matter is, I have had more trouble
with Metastock crashing than any other financial software package I have
used. The realtime charts are especially prone to cease updating, requiring
deleting the chart from the layout and then opening the security again in a
new chart and adding it to the layout, several times a day. Also, Metastock
is a huge resource hog, even on a Dell Workstation 933mhz 420 with 256mb of
RDRAM! System resources low, it says. What are we supposed to do, lease
time on a supercomputer?
However, your charts do have a better look and feel than any other program.
I hope you do get it right soon, so I can stay with Metastock.
Another big problem is lack of easy data organization. You should provide
lists of securities by industry and sector group, not by alphabetization.
That does me no good. Also, backtesting is inferior since you can only test
one security at a time. In AIQ for example, you can test as many as you
want all at once.
Ron Scott
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-metastock@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:owner-metastock@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of PD Manager
Sent: Friday, July 07, 2000 9:25 AM
To: 'metastock@xxxxxxxxxxxxx'
Subject: RE: Where in blazes is 7.02 ????
The final release build of 7.02 for MetaStock was completed on June 28th.
The final release build of 7.02 for MetaStock Professional was completed on
July 3rd.
The master CDs for both of these programs have been given to our order
fulfillment department and they are currently undergoing duplication. I
would expect the CDs to be available within 2-3 weeks.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their patience
while waiting for this release.
I would also like to address the quality issue with some of our most recent
releases of MetaStock. After the release of 6.52 and subsequent versions,
we recognized that we had a quality problem with our software. The long
delay for version 7.02 was a direct result of our focus on trying to improve
the overall quality of MetaStock.
Does this mean that we have fixed everything or that users will not
encounter problems with 7.02? Not likely. With software of the magnitude
of MetaStock, it is impossible to promise that all problems have been fixed
or even identified. I can promise that we fixed numerous problems with
MetaStock. Most of these were reported by customers. Many of them were
identified and fixed through an increased effort of internal testing. All
of this increased focus on quality has taken additional time. We delayed
the release of 7.02 many times over the last several weeks because we wanted
to make sure we felt good about it. No, it won't be perfect but I can
promise that it will be better.
Although this is my first posting to the list, I have been lurking on this
list for many months. I want everyone to know that I do read your postings
and I do feel and understand your frustrations. I am in awe of the passion
that our users have for the analysis they are doing. With that passion
comes the frustration that MetaStock doesn't always do exactly what an
individual user requires. It may be caused by a design issue or it may be
caused by an outright bug. I have also come to realize that the passion of
our users makes it even more impossible to make everyone happy. We are
trying to develop and maintain software that works well for everyone. This
means that it most likely will not be perfect for everyone. There is no
shortage of analysis techniques and methods among the users of MetaStock.
Each user is very passionate and convinced about their own methods. If you
don't believe that, just look at the contents of this list over the last
several months. We constantly agonize over how we can make MetaStock a
good, solid, overall solution for everyone, from the novice investor to the
professional. It is an ongoing work in progress. It is also no easy task
but we are trying to meet the challenge head on.
I will continue to monitor this list, and I will make an occasional
contribution. In return, all I ask is that the members of this list
continue to be patient with us. We do not enjoy frustrating our users any
more than they enjoy being frustrated. Hopefully, those times are rare and
isolated. I admit that MetaStock is not perfect software and my development
team and I have made mistakes in design and implementation. We will almost
certainly make mistakes in the future that will frustrate our users. We do
not find this acceptable, but if we admit to ourselves that we are not
perfect, we are better able to always improve.
If in the future we are delayed with releases of our products, please be
patient. I will promise to end some of the overwhelming silence to the
question of "where is the next release you promised". Please be prepared to
get answers similar to "It just isn't ready yet" or "We are having problems
and you wouldn't want it in it's current condition."
In closing I would like to clarify my purpose for monitoring and posting to
this list. I monitor it to keep in touch with our users and how they use
our software. I also monitor it to keep in touch with the problems they are
having with our software. I will admit that it isn't always easy to read
the criticism of the software that my team and I have helped develop. My
team and I, however, are not above taking criticism and we DO take it
seriously.
Recently, I have decided to make occasional postings when I can clear up
some misunderstandings or when I can contribute some meaningful information.
I do not plan on using this as a forum to defend Equis against criticism.
Please be aware that I cannot provide technical support for our products.
The Equis Product Support team is much more capable of providing quality
support and troubleshooting than I. I am also not a good person to contact
to campaign for a feature addition or a design change. No single person
within Equis decides the feature set of our software or it's overall design.
The Product Development team is responsible for the creation and maintenance
of the product as designed by the design group within Equis. I am not a
good person to ask for information regarding upgrade policy or pricing.
This does NOT mean that I am not willing to contribute meaningful
information where I can.
Thank you again for your patience and understanding.
Ken Hunt
Programming Manager
Equis International
-----Original Message-----
From: Nicholas Kormanik [mailto:nkormanik@xxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Friday, July 07, 2000 12:07 AM
To: metastock@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Where in blazes is 7.02 ????
This is getting ridiculous!
|