Informatica 1.0: Ten Rules to Buy Software

Ten Rules to Buy Software

By Peter Black
author of INFORMATICA 1.0: Access to the Best Tools for Mastering the Information Revolution (Available at Amazon.com)

Informatica Rules Software

1 Never buy version 1.0. Version 1.0 of every piece of software ever written, throughout history, without exception, stinks up the room. The best publishers release version 2.0 as quickly as they can with more new features than bugs, and with most or all of the first generation bugs gone (there aren’t many best publishers, but V. 2.0 is almost always better). If you must get version 1.0, make sure there is a clear and inexpensive upgrade path.

2 Buy what you friends have. At two o’clock in the morning, when the thing has crashed, and you need to know how to resurrect the data, you want to depend on people who know and love (or at least tolerate) you. You do not want to talk to some geek on a support line. (The exception to this rule is when your friends have a penchant for version 1.0.)

3 If it handles data, it must have good, industry standard import and export facilities. You probably already have done what you are doing with the new program with another program, or your friends have. Hence you want to be able to suck in the old data from the old to the new. You probably will want to switch to a better program sometime in the future, hence you want to blow your present data out in a compatible form.

4 It should be Internet savvy (the meaning of that varies from program to program). By now, any program that does take advantage of the Internet is being maintained by people who are hopelessly out of touch with technical and marketing realities. If they screw up on that, they’ll have hosed other issues as well.

5 Get it free first (if you can), then buy it later when you know it works. Loss leader downloads (see Viral Marketing) are more and more common. Anybody who is not willing to let you test drive an expensive program has something to hide (either a bad program, or marketing myopia – see rule 4 above).

6 Make sure there is a good strategy for downloading upgrades over the Internet. You should not have to wait for a new disk in order to get bug fixes. Good software publishers have figured out that it pays to make it easy for their customers to get the latest and greatest over the net, via their Web site. Check out the product’s Web site before you buy.

7 If the software depends on any other software, make sure that software is included in the package. "Batteries not included" is the fulcrum of anguish in consumer electronics. If your software requires a certain video driver, multi-media playback capability, browser or plug-in, make sure it is included in the box. It is NOT a safe bet that a compatible version of the required software will be available over the Net.

8 Check the quality of the soft documentation (on the disk, or available on-line). Nobody reads the printed manual. Not you, not me. Hence, the integrated software documentation (the stuff you get to through the Help menu) should be clear and complete. If it makes constant reference to the printed docs, you have a problem – the developer was too lazy to make a good integrated help system. In that case, you have to consider where else they cut corners in the creation of the software.

9 Get software that has an auto-update capability. Good examples of this are the Norton Utilities from Symantec, which remind you to check for updates regularly and then with the click of a button automatically take care of the download and installation. Intuit’s Quickbooks is also good at this, and elements of the Microsoft Office Suite (2000 version) are very good. They have an ‘Office on the Web’ file menu option, and a ‘Detect and Repair’ option in the same menu to find and replace damaged and/or corrupted files. When it comes to Microsoft code, this is a necessity because of the vast number of files it installs, and the B+ nature of the code (see Microsoft Outlook)

10 Buy more RAM (random access memory). You think this sounds like filler, drawn from the ten hardware rules just to make an even ten here? Wrong! Nothing will improve the responsiveness of your software more than added RAM installed in your machine.

Copyright Ó 2000 by Xiphias Corporation

The above is an excerpt from the book,
INFORMATICA 1.0
Access to the Best Tools for Mastering the Information Revolution
by Peter M. Black (Published by Random House; 0375706283; $22.95US)

Learn how to enjoy and decipher the information revolution--with this fun, easy-to-use techno-geek tour of the best tools available today. In five revealing sections--on hardware, sources, software, plasticware, and paperware--Informatica 1.0 puts into new perspective the avalanche of new products. It selects the best tools for an information society, yielding the best ways to sense and measure things, to manage the results, and to refine them into practical knowledge.

Peter M. Black founded and is CEO of XIPHIAS Corporation, a Los Angeles-based publisher of reference products on disk and the Net. He has a Master's Degree in Sanskrit and Linguistics, and has run XIPHIAS Corporation since 1979. He is the publisher of Encyclopedia Electonicaä, and is recognized authority on Infrastructure Warfare. Please visit http://www.etronica.com for more information.

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	Informatica Rules	Software
1	Never buy version 1.0.	Version 1.0 of every piece of software ever written, throughout history, without exception, stinks up the room. The best publishers release version 2.0 as quickly as they can with more new features than bugs, and with most or all of the first generation bugs gone (there aren’t many best publishers, but V. 2.0 is almost always better). If you must get version 1.0, make sure there is a clear and inexpensive upgrade path.
2	Buy what you friends have.	At two o’clock in the morning, when the thing has crashed, and you need to know how to resurrect the data, you want to depend on people who know and love (or at least tolerate) you. You do not want to talk to some geek on a support line. (The exception to this rule is when your friends have a penchant for version 1.0.)
3	If it handles data, it must have good, industry standard import and export facilities.	You probably already have done what you are doing with the new program with another program, or your friends have. Hence you want to be able to suck in the old data from the old to the new. You probably will want to switch to a better program sometime in the future, hence you want to blow your present data out in a compatible form.
4	It should be Internet savvy (the meaning of that varies from program to program).	By now, any program that does take advantage of the Internet is being maintained by people who are hopelessly out of touch with technical and marketing realities. If they screw up on that, they’ll have hosed other issues as well.
5	Get it free first (if you can), then buy it later when you know it works.	Loss leader downloads (see Viral Marketing) are more and more common. Anybody who is not willing to let you test drive an expensive program has something to hide (either a bad program, or marketing myopia – see rule 4 above).
6	Make sure there is a good strategy for downloading upgrades over the Internet.	You should not have to wait for a new disk in order to get bug fixes. Good software publishers have figured out that it pays to make it easy for their customers to get the latest and greatest over the net, via their Web site. Check out the product’s Web site before you buy.
7	If the software depends on any other software, make sure that software is included in the package.	"Batteries not included" is the fulcrum of anguish in consumer electronics. If your software requires a certain video driver, multi-media playback capability, browser or plug-in, make sure it is included in the box. It is NOT a safe bet that a compatible version of the required software will be available over the Net.
8	Check the quality of the soft documentation (on the disk, or available on-line).	Nobody reads the printed manual. Not you, not me. Hence, the integrated software documentation (the stuff you get to through the Help menu) should be clear and complete. If it makes constant reference to the printed docs, you have a problem – the developer was too lazy to make a good integrated help system. In that case, you have to consider where else they cut corners in the creation of the software.
9	Get software that has an auto-update capability.	Good examples of this are the Norton Utilities from Symantec, which remind you to check for updates regularly and then with the click of a button automatically take care of the download and installation. Intuit’s Quickbooks is also good at this, and elements of the Microsoft Office Suite (2000 version) are very good. They have an ‘Office on the Web’ file menu option, and a ‘Detect and Repair’ option in the same menu to find and replace damaged and/or corrupted files. When it comes to Microsoft code, this is a necessity because of the vast number of files it installs, and the B+ nature of the code (see Microsoft Outlook)
10	Buy more RAM (random access memory).	You think this sounds like filler, drawn from the ten hardware rules just to make an even ten here? Wrong! Nothing will improve the responsiveness of your software more than added RAM installed in your machine.