home automation mega poll, part III

Unfortunately i wanted to view the results and it cast me a vote for None of the Above instead of MainLobby. BSR - hope its an easy fix if possible.
 
Wow, I posted this mainly to give Dean a little "jab", not to start WWIII (or I guess now it's WWIV)!

First some facts:

CocoonTech is very happy for Dean and the popularity CQC is getting. He has put a lot of time and thought into the product and now it’s great to see the fruits of his labor come to fruition.

Remember this, CocoonTech stuck beside Dean waaayyy back when he was first starting out. We gave him his own forum, had him as a special CocoonTech chat guest speaker, and even held a contest so he could gain popularity by giving away some copies of CQC. Name ONE other forum that has helped Dean as much as this forum has, especially in his early days with the product! I think this point is important, especially for our newer forum members who were not around and may not be aware of this!

As far as biasing, it's kind of funny, when CocoonTech first started out it was considered a "HomeSeer forum". Maybe it was taking on the character of its staff (electron and I both use HomeSeer).

I agree with Guy that this forum would appear to take on a "bias" on whatever product is popular at the time (in our early days the Ocelot and Caddx were the hardware rage).

As far as voicing opinions, I believe (as already stated above) that this forum is as unbiased as it gets. Yes, some of it is negative. That's what it takes to be unbiased, BOTH positive and negative. If a vendor only wants to hear POSITIVE comments about their products, well, they shouldn't venture out of their own (moderated) forums then! :)

Don't think for ONE SINGLE MINUTE that HomeSeer, Cinemar, Elk, and others are not reading all of these (positive and negative) comments though. They know deep down that CocoonTech will offer a true representation of a product's highs and lows and believe me, they are "keeping score" with the heartbeat of their products on this forum (I have had MANY vendors echo this while at CES this past year)!

I have had what could be perceived as "negative" comments with the Elk M1 recently. I know some of it is just what "I" would want, but I'm betting there were at least one or two meetings at Elk Technologies discussing my points.

Also, in order to bring balance, I recommend Elk and list the many positive features it offers.

I believe the frustration of trying to make (ENTER APPROPRIATE VENDOR NAMES HERE) products work is echoed on this forum. I mean after all, if a product is ready for release, why do users feel THEY are beta testing (a released product) while trying to make it work?!?!

No documentation, conflicts, etc… all lead to not enough beta testing and total frustration to the end user.

I realize there is pressure to get a product out, but the retribution of not having it work needs to be thought of before releasing a “half baked†cake!

A company can take this as “bashing†OR they can recognize that there are a LOT of problems with their products and act accordingly (instead of burying their heads in the sand).

Also, I must say, that as a regular HomeSeer forum member, I have witnessed MORE HomeSeer bashing on THEIR site than I have on ours.

Also, for what it is worth, I guess you could say I "advertise" BOTH MainLobby AND HomeSeer posting examples of these products into my How-To’s. (Might not be a big deal to some, but I believe the How-To’s , as I’ve stated many times before, are the flagship of CocoonTech).

I believe that a LOT of balance is offered on this forum. You just have to step back and take notice of BOTH positive and negative posts! :)
 
BraveSirRobbin said:
Don't think for ONE SINGLE MINUTE that HomeSeer, Cinemar, Elk, and others are not reading all of these (positive and negative) comments though.
Yes. And on that note, to HomeSeer, and to Mr. Helmke in particular...

WE LOVE YOU!!!
KEEP IT COMING.
 
Anyone remember the pretty much outright contempt and derision that was often pointed in my direction back in the day? Some of it was openly done and some done in private and on the chat and on other fora.

Though I might have had a few arguments here and there, it's pretty easy to tell the constructive criticism from the taunting, so I took my lumps, and took the constructive criticism and applied it and it we've closed most of the holes that were pointed out.

Initially we were much more theater oriented (and this is an HA crowd) and oriented a little too much towards programmers, and most of the criticism was aimed towards those things. So we got those traditional automation features incorporated, and the next release (which I'll post some preview stuff of soon), really takes care of the 'having to be a programmer' thing pretty substantially.
 
Dean Roddey said:
Anyone remember the pretty much outright contempt and derision that was often pointed in my direction back in the day? Some of it was openly done and some done in private and on the chat and on other fora.
Actually I recall quite well, another poster in this thread once mentioned "Where will you're system be next year if Dean quits" or something to that effect along with other slanderous comments, well its been a year since he mentioned that and your still here despite his words that seemed to imply you would fail in this market and that your product was sub-standard compared to another..I now compare your product to that one and I personally know which is more reliable and supported without excuses and is at least updated regularily.

You did take alot of lumps and jabbing from others..I watched and even tried your product and thought..wow this is so technical compared to XXXX and basically it reminded me of Crestron like programming with the huge exception that you actually provided support..I pondered for months and waited to see if the product I had previously invested in would actually change..after 6 months with no updates I got sick of waiting and took the plunge and within the first week I knew CQC was much more technical and advancing quickly..it was a no brainer and I purchased the following week.


As for your programming skills Dean..you walk the walk without excuses and delays and have done everything you mentioned over the months, any time I have had a problem you resolved it..whenever I mentioned something wasn't working right you had it fixed in the next release and I totally appreciate support like that.

*You also taught me the basics of writing a PDL driver over a week or so, in the end I created a one way driver for the Russound ST2-XM and then Mark from CQC also created two more free one-way drivers for my pre-amp and dvd player and then for all that I hired you guys to write a two-way driver for my processor and you did it for cheaper than the competition charged me the first time around.

*I still hear the occasional comment from another company about how other products are more graphical and better looking than CQC, thats pretty laughable :)

All graphics for CQC are free and they do not sell image packs, I have personally donated many graphics for CQC users and plan to donate as many as possible in the future and in my opinion they look just as good as others who claim they are professionals and charge high fee's for image packs.

A good example is my XM logo packages for CQC that are much better than any others that you pay money for and they are 100% free..I am actually surprised another company would sell *copyrighted* images...not thats it any of my business.

I look forward to V 1.7 and everything after that!
 
Before coming to CT I only knew the old produtcs, products that had enough money to advertise themselves, and the ones with big market share. Do I want to use the products that everybody has, just because other people have it? NO.

I'm a technical guy, and I want the best balanced solution. Moderm, stable, flexible, moderately priced. I didn't know if the solutions with big market share were what I wanted. You know you cant trust their what they promise in their web pages. It takes huge amounts of time to compare all the features among them. So CT came like godsend to help me not only decide between know solutions, but also learn about new alternatives.

The discussions about everybody experiences, etc. How'd I know about Insteon problems? Without CT I would have invested in Insteon and spent a lot of money when the technology still have some time to mature.

So if it is biased or unbalanced, I dont care. What I care is that via cooperative discussions the community gravitates towards the solutions that appears to be the best solutions to most of us. The reason that it does not gravitates to one single solution is that each of us have different needs and preferences. But as it happens with all what involves preferences, we are not all different after all. That is why Elk and M1 (regardless of their marketing budget) are in the top in this point of time. They know the winning formula already. They only reason to lose that place if other competitors apply the same formula.
 
Good point elcano.

Another point I wanted to make is that CocoonTech also strives to help out newer members, especially when it comes to troubleshooting their systems, or offering advice on how to troubleshoot it.

I'm sure a lot of our memebers can remember a past post or two where a CocoonTech member spent some time to help them out with a problem! ;)
 
elcano said:
That is why Elk and M1 (regardless of their marketing budget) are in the top in this point of time. They know the winning formula already. They only reason to lose that place if other competitors apply the same formula.
I intended to say Elk and CQC.
 
I thought I would cast a vote but it says I have already voted. I did try to view the results, does doing this void your right to vote?
 
I think that most of the forum software products do this. I assume that the idea is that you shouldn't be able to see the results before you vote, since it might influence your vote. Makes some sense.
 
Dean,

Thanks for the information on how the voting works. I am new at this and did not understand.

Maybe it is just as well that I did not get to vote since there seems to be a lot of hard feelings in this area.

Thanks again,
Brian
 
Welcome to Chuck and Tim and the other 4 Mister House users that voted (so far).

Not that you did anything wrong (aka you weren't the first), but in the interest of full disclosure, the Mister House mailing list was notified of this poll. And like Dean, Chuck said that if you were a member, you might want to vote. IMHO, no harm, no foul.

But Chuck did say "They seem to steer people to commercial solutions.", which may have some truth to it, but it certainly isn't intentional or any slam against MH. Some people are obviously not good candidates for a package that has a bit of a learning curve. But there certainly are lots of geeky types here that would love to give MH a try if there was more public enthusiasm for it.

So, to all you people using products that only got a couple of votes, don't be shy and don't be afraid to sing the praises of whatever package you use and why you like it.

EDIT: Kudos to MH! I just looked at their email list and they have about 55,000 messages and almost 700 subscribers. So lets get some more of you active over here :D
 
I'm curious. Why is HomeSeer listed as 2 different versions? Are all the other products so new that they only have one version or does this poll have a bit of bias built in?
 
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