|
|
Posted by doc on 10/05/42 11:51
Good God Tapeguy, you and WD sure can miss the life of a realtime "good
working relationship" Can't you stop for one minute to go beyond that world
of inside the box Mac thinking? Think outside the box. Couldn't you see
that the poor boys heart was broken? He had convinced his boss to buy all
this gear, watched his boss literrally dying and lossing his business yet
never once turning from his own recommendation, and yet, he probably knew my
heart and that I wouldn't make him pay for the error. He probably said it
out of personal disgust and perhaps at the time meant it and would have
turned from it. Much as I did with our first TV client when the first G5
sunk and I had to call him on the phone and tell him that three of the five
tapings had gone south and that we had taped over the archived tapes in the
last taping session wherein (like the 22yo editor/techy I said to the
client, "We'll pay for the entire mistake including your guests travel time
and overnight lodging and I am so sorry that I'd give you free shows for the
rest of the year if I could handle it." My clients like me with the young
man and his error have better and more REAL relationships than that. My
client said, "nonsense, things happen and at least there were two out of the
three OK." Let's just reshoot.
It resounded what I said to the young man, "nonsense, where do we go from
here." I liked his comments (which were mine from the beginning but I
believed in listening to the Apple/Mac sales guys they gotta know what their
talkign about right?) but the young man's comments were, "I can assure you
that if you let me do this boss, it WONT BE A WROTTEN APPLE" And as I've
surely stated clearly it wasn't and isn't. The man works for me still and
turns out jobs in record time (so far as I know) and his latest
recommendations on client applications have added a steady $800 a month to
our revenue stream and an idea we're working on that he originated will
probably double that by next year. Moreover, he already knows that in
January he is moving to the field production side where he will manage the
field operations (of course after getting the 3rd machine up and running and
the network finished and the last of the cameras converted to the cine style
100B's)
So, go ahead and make fun of him and I for our stupidity and our honesty or
at least our desire to be sincere and honest. If we say something you don't
like, then why not attack the author huh? That is, if the truth sounds too
bad, then make the author a liar instead of stepping back and saying,
"hmmmmmm, i should look into that." This latter philosophy is where we have
gotten all our business. That's right I'm revealing how we got over 200
clients - - real clients and real paying clients - - most of whom pay us in
advance before we step foot out the door or turn a computer on. We looked
at Apple/Mac cleints and areas that sourround that arena and said, "step
back and look for the weaknesses and where can we help." Our error in logic
was that we were trying to fix their weaknesses with Apple/Mac's, wherein we
didn't have the workflow problems they had (although we learned later that
one of the reasons they were behind was because of their crashes and file
issues) so we resolved it with Windows/PCs/Avid.
This was where I knew we were on to something, when I went to a TV station
and one of the engineers dropped a file we brought him on the desktop and it
dissappeared and when I asked, "where'd it go?" he said, "who knows, it
happens all the time. we just redo it." when i further asked, "well that
can mess up the edit can't it?" he said, "are you kidding? it's a total
restart sometimes." that's when i seen an open door opportunity. and thus,
wha lah as with my old industry days, "create the need and satisfy the need"
and you have a business opportunity. and we did and do.
So to those reading believe what you want, sales guys who have a vested
interest in your believing their story, or a burned user who listened to
those sales guys and nearly got fried with a wrotton Apple/Mac solution . .
all of which had been recommended by the factory direct personnel (sales
people) and industry experts (sales people for dealers and/or softtware tech
employees)
In the future to investigate a product our philosophy is simple: Talk to
the people who have failed with the solution. Therein are you capable of
making the same mistakes or experiencing the same issues.
Herein, when we wanted to do streaming we sought software. Pinnacle by far
had at least 100 times more complaints on their Studio 9 per "attaboy" noted
so we listened only to "o crap"s and not a single "attaboy" the issues
appeared to be (as usual with pc solutions wherein folks don't want to dump
an extra buck into something meaningful) hardware softness and so we bought
a power machine over a standard model for about $180 more and never had a
single issue. OTH, we bought a copy of Studio 9 (and got a second one free)
and dumped the first on an under powered machine as a test (now wait till i
hear the flack from the anglo saxon's on this comment) - - that's right i
bought a copy of studio 9 and dumped it on a low end (yet inside the
requirment specs) machine and experienced all the problems that were stated
in all of the user groups (lock ups, hangs, crashes, jerky vid's, etc. etc.
etc.) The second copy (later version) did the same thing. However, on the
high end, guess what? You guessed it, it worked.
Concluding, FAST high quality NLE editing go Windows/PC/Avid on a high
powered dual core 2.8Gb or faster, 800 FSB, 2Gb ram, with HOT separate Video
Card from ATI and all Serial ATA 7.2K speed drives and you'll be cookin'
cause no matter what Michael Jackson says, ONE BAD APPLE CAN SPOIL THE WHOLE
BUNCH BABE! thus, that makes mickey a liar huh?
drd
"Mr. Tapeguy" <mr.tapeguy@pro-tape.com> wrote in message
news:1151260862.931904.49970@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
>
> doc wrote:
>> yes, it was a factory direct purchase via telephone. and one would think
>> that they would have rushed to our rescue in the matter. but not only
>> didn't they but they ended up hanging up on us when our computer tech got
>> really disturbed (cause he was the one who recommended buying the mac's
>> in
>> the first place when i was pushing pc's) and he was the first to say,
>> "let's
>> get rid of these things and you can take the loss out of my paycheck"
>
> I have to agree with WD on this doc in saying that I'd love to have an
> employee who would take that kind of responsibility either because he
> has the ethic or because he can afford it - whatever! I have never
> once had anyone take full responsbility for a recommendation which
> didn't pan out and if they take any at all it's always a shrug of the
> shoulders and "I'm sorry" - perhaps authentic but they all seem to
> figure that we hold the reins there for we take the good and the bad.
> I'm not calling you a liar but I will say that this would be, in my
> experience, unprecedented.
>>
>> we didn't take the loss out of his check but we did make the change and
>> have
>> since added one more identical machine of similiar config and are
>> tomorrow
>> or monday getting a 3rd due to the increased workload. getting rid of
>> the
>> mac's saved us. as of september last year it looked like we were going
>> belly up since we had committed ourselves to complete video production
>> services and with the mac issues i nearly cried because i had put so much
>> work and effort into building this segment of our business and it looked
>> like i was going to fail miserably.
>
> I simply have not heard of a situation where you had so many
> technically expert people on staff and Apple basically refused to help
> and the problems were not rectificable. I still have not heard how you
> ended up at a "warranty repair station" that was not actually an
> Authorized Service Provider. I can sympathize with the concept of the
> problem and in reality, I have one similar experience with a company
> with whom I was relying on an employee to give me the skinny on what
> was going on. As he was technically adept and most familar with the
> gear I took his word for it that it "didn't work as advertised." One
> e-mail to the factory revealed that our employee's stand was a "common
> misconception" and I was flabbergasted. I guess it's really true that
> the buck stops here. Good thing, I was going to have to take a loss on
> a $8000+ piece of gear that was bought a year ago and has "never
> worked" - I still lost a year of proper usage but now I know that it
> works just fine with a very minor workaround.
>
>
>> however, when we bought the windows media center pc with an ati x700 vid
>> card and avid software without any other mods or tweaking or need to call
>> any tech supports, we were up and running and learned the software in a
>> few
>> days AND BEST OF ALL saved our business.
>>
>> the switch to pc opened the door to at least a dozen folks within 100
>> miles
>> who were ready to jump in and help at the flip of a switch but we didn't
>> need it. our findings thus far are this . . if your thinking apple/mac
>> just
>> spend that kind of money on a pc and windows application software and
>> you'll
>> be able to run circles around a mac. however, most competetors to mac
>> DON'T
>> do this and then wonder why the mac does better. our pc's and software
>> were
>> 1/2 the cost of a mac alone and we're outclocking the mac's we had by at
>> least 50%.
>
> Here again, you're making broad generalizations. If you'e specifically
> referring to Avid, your end cost for comparably equipped systems will
> be much higher. If you're talking about Liquid, maybe your initial
> cost will be lower but you have a track record of issues.
>
> The only way you can get by on the cheap with Avid is to go with a
> version that does DV only. Then you don't need as much computer and
> the software is relatively inexpensive. As far as outclocking a Mac by
> 50%, I'm not aware of any such significant differences between a G5 and
> AMD or Intel processor before and certainly not now.
>
> Again, yours is not the typical experience. Not the repair issues, not
> the lack of technical support and not the benchmarks. I am trying to
> take you at your word that this actually happened but WD has pointed
> out that we don't know who you really are and if you look at the
> typical track record of Apple in regard to frequency of repairs,
> customer satisfaction etc., your statements would be tantamount to
> telling everyone to avoid Toyotas because they don't run and can't be
> repaired. If you got a lemon, so be it. It is NOT the case with most
> others.
>>
>> our computer tech who was a biggie mac guy has even sold his own personal
>> imac and gotten a toshiba A55 model with windows xp pro and he said he's
>> finished with mac and if you think i lay down some bad publicity for
>> apple
>> and macintosh, you should hear him sing. we figure our total loss for
>> having gone apple/mac to be in the neighborhood of $20,000 to $30,000 in
>> time, lost business, and lost potential business. in fact, during this
>> episode, we lost the only client we have ever lost since i started the
>> business in 2002. in other words, in the whole time i have had my
>> business
>> and carrying over 200 clients i've only lost one client, and that was
>> during
>> our apple/mac solution and it was a video client who nearly sued us
>> because
>> of delays (during which we were suffering numerous crashes and then had
>> the
>> mother board failure on the other machine)
>
> I would like to hear him sing...can he do "Feelings?" : >
>
> If I had had the kind of experience you report there would have been a
> lawsuit - period. You are talking about gross negligence. And again,
> while there are certainly plenty of people out there who prefer Avid
> over FCP for one reason or another, it's usually feature-based or
> familiarity or something along those lines.
>
> With all the FCP solutions we have ever sold I have had one machine
> which had some issues. We gave them a loaner while theirs was being
> looked at. Turned out to be bad RAM. The story of insurmountable and
> unfixable problems along with the refusal of any assistance is just not
> something I have ever EVER heard either personally or from any other
> source. I'm just scratching my head and wondering how it could
> possibly happen.
>
> I will say NEVER buy a system without going through a reputable dealer.
> You need someone else to be there in the event of issues.
>
> I'm sorry the system didn't work for you. I hope you understand why
> there are skeptics. It doesn't make any sense.
>
> Craig
>
> http;//www.pro-tape.com
>
Navigation:
[Reply to this message]
|