Well, it looks like HS is just about dead. For those that don't know, they recently (a few months back) came out with their HSTouch product. A pre-release promotion was held at the end of November to save $100. Well, weeks and now months have gone by and the product is still in an extremely Beta state with only a couple of minimal releases during this time.
Many of us have posted on the board over the past few weeks asking for any kind of status update on the progress. This was met with silence with the exception of Rupp doing his best to encourage folks to be patient and his attempts to get someone from HST to respond.
We finally got a release in the past couple of days with a few trivial fixes with none of the major issues addressed. Several users posted their disappointment with the release today. This was met with messages being deleted and accounts being blocked.
Please note that while some of the messages were improper, the majority of deleted messages simply contained customer dissatisfaction and indications of the major bugs. In fact, my final post before being banned included an expression of willingness to assist with debug builds, etc. which could help with making the product better. While I had b#t$hed plenty, I had also posted several messages saying that I was fully expecting the product to get there eventually. Of course this was only a few weeks into the HST silence, before patience was completely lost.
This situation is not surprising. HS began its slide from being one of the best supported products with a great community to its current state as HST moved from being a "hobby" to a commercial product. This was their right, but many users noticed the continued degradation in customer appreciation.
A few days ago, a message was posted from HST that indicated they had reduced the company to simply Rich and Marketing Mark, forcing all issues to be addressed by Rich. This on the heels of releasing a major software component. Looks like we have just about reached the end of the road of what was once the best HA software with the best user group on the net.
gk
Many of us have posted on the board over the past few weeks asking for any kind of status update on the progress. This was met with silence with the exception of Rupp doing his best to encourage folks to be patient and his attempts to get someone from HST to respond.
We finally got a release in the past couple of days with a few trivial fixes with none of the major issues addressed. Several users posted their disappointment with the release today. This was met with messages being deleted and accounts being blocked.
Please note that while some of the messages were improper, the majority of deleted messages simply contained customer dissatisfaction and indications of the major bugs. In fact, my final post before being banned included an expression of willingness to assist with debug builds, etc. which could help with making the product better. While I had b#t$hed plenty, I had also posted several messages saying that I was fully expecting the product to get there eventually. Of course this was only a few weeks into the HST silence, before patience was completely lost.
This situation is not surprising. HS began its slide from being one of the best supported products with a great community to its current state as HST moved from being a "hobby" to a commercial product. This was their right, but many users noticed the continued degradation in customer appreciation.
A few days ago, a message was posted from HST that indicated they had reduced the company to simply Rich and Marketing Mark, forcing all issues to be addressed by Rich. This on the heels of releasing a major software component. Looks like we have just about reached the end of the road of what was once the best HA software with the best user group on the net.
gk
