Hi to the WxD Fraternity
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AMEN!
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well, i was compressing the exe file, but i have discovered that means it uses more memory as it runs (at least in windows 2000, where you can monitor memory use of programs, and i have been trying to reduce memory use after a very rude email from a user (win 98)
so, thats why the extra file size for the download
but i could have just the latest weatherd.exe file as a zip to download…if no other changes needed…
good idea?
clock:
actualy, 9.89 might be a bit better, as i have trimmed some things out of the program.
Brian.
Perhaps that’s me, but Zipping a download file is not going to help reduce the massiveness of the program! Perhaps you’ve seen in your experiments with “vws” the slowing down of yor computer processes. Your program is fast moving to the same inane problem! Or maybe you’ve got an extraordinary PC that is much better than the average non-nerd who is using your program.
Again my vote, if there is such a thing, goes for a program with less bells and whistles that works! Perhaps, two programs would be best! One that works, and one that you can expand exponentially for those who like to download new versions every other day and do all those nerdy things that us ordinary folks don't even comprehend!
Best,
Ed Bradley
humm, well, new additions are not used in the program if you are not using/have not setup them up,i.e if you just setup what you need, then that is all the program will do, so i cant see the problem there…but each minute the program does have to go through and check quite a few things
i will try having the ini file as a memory ini file, so that reduces disk access, that might help
cpu use is still very small (excpet when updating web files)
there is a free lite version:
http://www.weather-display.com/download/aprslitesetup.exe
http://www.weather-display.com/download/WeatherD.zip
for the latest
unzip to where you have installed weather display
Well, I’ll be blunt here…
Guys, the program costs $58 with a lot of free upgrades. Although asking for different versions is okay, realize that, from the independent programmers position, version management is a dog with fleas. When you have to make a change in multiple versions, you end up writing and re-writing code since the object interactions could be very different from one version to the next.
Even the software monsters have tended to go with one version, and those that have more than one tend to just have features disabled so the package is pretty close to the same.
Since this program uses continuous serial data, ftp sockets, and a bunch of pretty complex stuff, it is always going to be a high resource application. At least from what I’ve seen with this, the bells and whistles don’t add a lot of pressure to the system.
I’d also advocate that Brian charge some annual update fee as well. This is a big undertaking with a limited audience so it really would be only fair.
Mike
Mike,
I like bluntness! Especially in programs! Also, you make several good points for having less versions.
I don't think you are completely aware of the number of weather stations worldwide! You need only to take a look at :
http://www.digitaldune.net/~ahubwest/javAPRS/wx.html
to find out how much “audience” there really is!
Please go to "vws" to see how radically "bells & whistles" can effect a program. I think you'll find a significant slowing in your computer especially in your mouse speed! I haven't run "vws" in several years, but I cannot envision that its gotten any better as far as program speed is concerned! The way it was then, for every added feature to your main page there was a loss of CPU speed. The cumulative reductions severely affected results overall! (Really true when you added graphs or animated dials)
I'd go for an annual fee, only because I wouldn't use it and maybe then we'd get a version stablization.
Best regards,
Ed
I haven’t had a major bug that prevented me from running WD continuously for months now. I running WD on a measly 1ghz PC with 256 megs of Ram on Win2K and it literally would run for months and has if I didn’t continue to upgrade to the latest versions causing me to have to shutdown. I like having the latest fixes, bells and whistles. WD only uses ~ 33 megs of ram on this machine. Thats less then the IE window is using as I type this message. Thats dang good in my opinion.
I strongly second grhughes remarks. WD runs fine for me for months on an even measlier 233 pentium with a really measly 80 megs ram under old w98se. I also have memturbo, zonealarm, and my ups power app running. I don’t regularly run anything else on that box, but I can download updates or check this forum or the online help without stopping WD and nothing breaks.
I don’t recall WD itself ever causing the system to fail, even before I shored up w98’s memory management with memturbo. In the about 9 months I have used the program the system has been brought down by one (pre ups) power outage, and two IP conflicts (my fault, but w98 doesn’t recover).
I think the average user underestimates just what is involved having a program running that is continually collecting data, esp from the serial port. They think multitasking is having word and excel open at the same time.
Gentlemen,
I don’t believe I’ve ever said that WD caused a breakdown in my system, although the program itself has crashed as late as Monday 25 Aug. I do have problems with icons that appear and disappear, ticks that won’t stay ticked, realgraphs that won’t continue or will continue outside the graph limits, Broadcast summary that won’t or will show icons as requested or show them willy/nilly, Main graphs that when asked to raise or lower temps don’t react to the click until hours later, a “min to tray,roll up, pin to top” that appears when it wants to or only if you click the right place on the page, outside temps on the main graph that are incorrect when compared to the actual temp ( 86 on the machine & under 85 on the graph ), current rain rate that after 4 hours of no rain shows (.028 in./hr ) and if you try to reset it goes to zero’s and then pops back up even larger, during upload of ftp you can click on " shutdown modem when finished" all you like but it won’t happen, each FTP log shows “e-mail completed” when I haven’t had e-mail clicked on for months. There are more, but I can’t think of them right now! These are the things that I try to live with and work around, but they still rag one just a little!
Ed Bradley
P.S. You didn’t comment on how many “audiences” ( customers) there are out there!
Ed
I was responding to general direction of this thread that I interpreted as “added features are bad” and your assertion that this “massive program” would only run well on an “extraordinary PC”.
Regarding the audience, there’s a huge difference between the total number of weather station owners worldwide, and the number of those that a one man, part time, programming operation can reasonably access with the tools and resources at his disposal. VWS gets market share because Ed gives it away with just about anything he sells. Of course he gets a nice retail margin on the hardware, his variable cost for VWS is $0, and oh-by-the-way that freebie probably excludes WD from 95% or more of his customers. (Not knocking Cumulus, er Ed, it’s a valid tactic and he runs a nice retail operation.)
I can tell now that arguing this topic is akin to arguing religion or politics! It won’t get you anywhere, so I quit!
Ed
i think you will find vws has reduced its cpu use from 2 years ago
without any formal avertising, except for links on some BBS like weather matrix (where Ed and co have tried in the past to make me go away from by calling me a Joke), WD has done pretty darn well for market share with some 2000 users around the world…
must have been a lot of word or mouth or via links on peoples web pages
but some la crosse dealers now have a link to wd too, which is helping alot, and there is a couple of resellers that sell it on CD so that helps alot too
“thankyou for choosing to fly with WD, as we know there is a choice of airlines”
I think the simple solution is if you’re running WD 3.0 and it’s working well, and you don’t need the extra “bells & whistles” then don’t download the newest version!
Brian is very accomiidating to useres requests to add features, but people seem to forget he’s a dairy farmer who is doing this in his spare time for fun. (fun?!)
The Linux version is a good example. He made an off the wall remark in a forum once about making a Mac & Linux version of Wd. I’m sure he was joking, but I gave him a nudge every once in a while, and a couple others would mention Linux too. The result now is he has TWO groups of users crying on his shoulder if things don’t work for them. ME INCLUDED!!
I’ve said the before, and I’ll say it agin. BRIAN! YOU DA MAN! If you wern’t half the world away, I’d take you down to your local and buy you a pint or two!
Ed,
Thanks for supporting my audience argument with a link. There’s a few thousand (maybe) stations out there.
Compare that to over 115,000 dentist offices and 200,000 doctor’s offices in the US alone. It is an exceptionally small software market by industry standards. And no way does it have the deep pockets that the above do where they pay $1500-15,000 for practice management software alone.
Assuming you sell 2000 WDs at $58 each, that’s a grand total of $116,000. Not a year, but total. And that’s what, 2/3 market capture, maybe higher.
The only case I’ve seen WD crash recently is when I run the computer into the ground and exhaust its resources, which is my own fault and due to my having not gotten around to rebuilding a 333 I have laying around (hehe, the plumber’s dripping faucet). It behaves fine as long as I behave well.
Mike
the first 1000 i sold was at 65 % or so of the price it is now, and 30 % of sales are from resellers who take 50%
and then there is the cost of running the web site, the web site for the online shop
that amounts to a few hundred dollars a month
then there is the cost of all the weather stations I have purchased to do testing (i have resold or given away most of them again)
and then my time:
i.e i am milking less cows so i can keep up with emails and forum postings…and spending less time farming, and so making less money farming as i should be…
i recenlty had my birthday…someone said welcome to the naughty forties…well i am only 36…but i look so grey now…etc…
i.e this is all very stressfull…especialy when you get rude emails etc…someone accused me of trying to simply make a profit from people the other day…amazing considering there is a free verison available, and i try very hard to support people…
the problem is every negative comment/bad feed back, moan groan, makes me less and less amicable and willing to bed over backward to do things…and eventualy, and i have threateneded too, i will just walk away from it all…and do a better job at farming that i am doign now (and its been a hard season: we have a virus in the cows being passed onto the calves and 30% of the calves have died 24 hours after birth, no matter how much care we give them…very depressing!
Brian, and the group…
As Brain ages, his time becomes more valuable to him and his family. Rightfully so, and his family deserves their fair share of his valuable time, especially while the kids are young.
I feel quite certain that anyone that has been with this forum for any time, knows Brian is excellent at his product’s support. For this I’m fully thankful!
In the post from Brian, he has told the profit margin on Weather Display and the monthly cost just to maintain Web presence. Can we all just simply be thankful that we have someone like Brian that has produced Weather Display?
I’m as big an abuser as anyone in asking for help when something doesn’t work. Brian has “Always” jumped in and done his best in resolving my issues. And resolve the issues are exactly what he does when we ask.
I’m also guilty of asking for two versions of WD. I didn’t acutally think of the problems he would be facing until I read further posts, but at one point I did ask. After becoming a little more educated in his software, I understand why my request for two versions was not practicle.
Once again, can we just get along and thank Brian for his professional approach to customer support?
Brian, thanks for a continous job well done.
Terry Brooks
Evansville, IN
USA
nothing professional here, I just try my best 
which sometimes is not good enough for some people…but you cant please everyone!
also,the NZ tax man takes 33% of the profit too…
i,m not doing this to make money,(but it helps to justify to the wife wehn she sits all alone watching TV at night becuase someone in europe has just got up out of bed (i.e i get emails/forum postings around the clock)and emailed me) but becuase most of the time i get a buz out of producing something that people like.
if you dont like it, then i am not forcing people to use it, and i dont claim it to be the #1 software solution and the ultimate program out there (like the compeition does).
i have just the zipped .exe as a new link on the downloads page now
or here
http://www.weather-display.com/download/WeatherD.zip
that should help
(but means another file for me to upload (which takes about 50 minutes)
oh well