HA Comparison Spreadsheet Changes

[upstatemike]

I am planning to do a refresh of the HA Comparison Spreadsheet during the month of January and I am looking for input and suggestions for improvement. I'm looking for input on things like:

Location: Is there a better place to host this?
Format: Is there a better way to present the information? Could it be made easier to use?
Content: Is there too much information? Is it too cluttered to be useful? Is there something important that is missing?
Data: What should I do with all the white space? Fill it in with my best guess? Delete products that do not have enough info?

I'm giving myself a month to ponder the fate of this thing before making any changes so if you have any ideas or opinions please let me know.

 

[123]

It is an excellent resource that, at the very least, ought to have its own sticky post. The existing HA Software sticky is long-winded and out-of-date; the spreadsheet, or something like it, should replace the existing sticky post.

I say "something like it" because our collective brainpower needs to express itself via another medium, namely a wiki. The spreadsheet demonstrates that our community can collaborate and build an excellent reference. These forums contain a wealth of information but finding those gems can be difficult. The recent addition of Google search is greatly appreciated. However, a wiki would be a much more powerful tool; it would provide newcomers with an easier way to get up to speed on any topic. The HA Spreadsheet would be just one of many documents, created by the community, expressing our collective knowledge of HA.

I'm not suggesting we replace the existing forums with a wiki but append one so as to appear (somewhat) seamless. The "conversations" we have are part of Cocoontech's appeal and cannot be substituted by 'team-built' reference manuals.

 

[hucker]

It is an excellent resource that, at the very least, ought to have its own sticky post. The existing HA Software sticky is long-winded and out-of-date; the spreadsheet, or something like it, should replace the existing sticky post.

I say "something like it" because our collective brainpower needs to express itself via another medium, namely a wiki. The spreadsheet demonstrates that our community can collaborate and build an excellent reference. These forums contain a wealth of information but finding those gems can be difficult. The recent addition of Google search is greatly appreciated. However, a wiki would be a much more powerful tool; it would provide newcomers with an easier way to get up to speed on any topic. The HA Spreadsheet would be just one of many documents, created by the community, expressing our collective knowledge of HA.

I'm not suggesting we replace the existing forums with a wiki but append one so as to appear (somewhat) seamless. The "conversations" we have are part of Cocoontech's appeal and cannot be substituted by 'team-built' reference manuals.

A wiki would be very nice for a collective repository of knowledge. For data that is tabular by nature a spreadsheet is tough to beat though...

 

[123]

How about including the base price of each HA software application?

 

[IVB]

How about including the base price of each HA software application?

My concern with that is the potential for misleading folks. As you said in another thread, the cost of plugins can dwarf the base price. Hence, folks may think it's a $600 for CQC vs $200 for other, when in reality it's $600 vs $1000 because they want to do so much.

 

[123]

The same is true for many products (cars, computers) but that doesn't prevent publishing their purchase price. Perhaps a footnote could explain that CQC's price is "all inclusive" with the exception of alcoholic beverages and gratuities.

 

[sic0048]

I had never looked at that before and it looks great.

If you include a base price, then you simply need to mark an astrix (*) by the capability if it requires an addon that costs money. That would allow a person to quicly see the base price and give them an idea of how much of the capability they actually have to pay for later. I actually think that would be a fair alternative.

SO CQC would have a base price of $595/yr with $95 annual fee, but have no * marks. Other software might be cheaper, but have an * next to 50% of their capabilities. I think that would at least warn a prospective buyer to look into the cost a little more.

CQC should also have a note with the $95 yr maintenance fee that it covers all future drivers, etc and most improvements as well.

 

[IVB]

how about marking the base price, then a column for "range for driver/plugin costs". That could be noted as $X-$Y per plugin, with an N/A in the CQC row?

 

[upstatemike]

Or to make it even simpler we could apply a constant to each products combined base cost plus annual maintenance fees to reflect equal monthly amortization payments against an arbitrary pre-determined period that represents the average expected life of the system.

 

[TonyNo]

...and then maybe add a price for the "nicely equipped" version where appropriate?