Upgrade Vs. Update and Fixes

[jimski51]

At least the fixes should be available. That is MTU's problem for that. I will try the support ticket.
Thanks.

[ddouglass]

Originally Posted by jimski51

At least the fixes should be available. That is MTU's problem for that. I will try the support ticket.
Thanks.

Jim, when was the last update that you paid for? How many new features have been added since that version? Those fixes you want for free are for the new features that you got as free updates. I don't think any other company would have given as much for free as MTU has done.

[jimski51]

I do have Silence Removal and Background Audio, Etc. If there are "fixes" for features that I already have, I should be able to receive those. All software companies maintain the products they sell. At least that is my experience.chemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
Don’t get me wrong, I love Hoster and I have sold several other people to buy it. I just want the fixes for what I already have.
I didn’t buy the new version yet because I don’t see any reason to buy it.

[admin]

Originally Posted by jimski51

At least the fixes should be available. That is MTU's problem for that. I will try the support ticket.
Thanks.

We are extremely focused on fixing any bugs that are reported. There are no software programs in any market at any price that are free of bugs. One of our consultant contractors uses a $1,000,000 CAD program, and it even has bugs he must work around to even use it.

When a new problem is reported to us, with rare exception, we address it instantly. If we can re-create the reported problem, we WILL solve it and come out with an upgrade release for it quickly.

However, there are some problems that defy our re-creating them. Some times it is the users' computer that is the problem. We provide free support, currently without any time limit such as 30 to 90 days after purchase. We tirelessly help our customers solve their problems, ALWAYS at our expense... and today it IS very expensive to provide the free, USA FACTORY based support we do to solve your problems. Our research indicates other "tech gurus" charge between $100 and $250 per hour for diagnosis work. We do this for free and have a better track record solving our customers problems compared to reports of what others were paid and failed to solve.

You listed these FIXES in a prior post.

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1. FIXED Crash with Remove Silence - "This was preventing unattended removing silence from the start/end of karaoke and audio files. We found and fixed the bug." It had not been reported before 4.22.

2. FIXED Random Crashing - "Hoster on XP runs fine. However, on Vista and Windows 7, it was randomly crashing after hours of operation. Rebuilding Hoster using the latest Microsoft Direct-X and Windows Media Player tools made Hoster more stable. You now need to upgrade your computer to the latest Direct-X and Windows Media Player versions to run Hoster 4.22." These problems kept appearing as Microsoft released new "updates" to Windows. We use Microsoft DevStudio to develop all our products. We had not updated our version for several years to insure you would not be forced to update Windows WMP and Direct-X tools. It finally became apparent that our only option was to upgrade our DevStudio, which we did.

3. FIXED Background Audio Player ">>" Play Next - "When this button is clicked to stop the current audio song playing and start the next, the button now grays out until the playing song ends (including fade-out), and the next song is ready." This wasn't a bug in our code, but rather a functional upgrade that made the button idiot-proof. Prior, if you continuously clicked this button, before it finished playing and fading down the current song, it could fail to advance to the next song; not what would be considered a serious problem. Normal users never reported this problem; only our Beta Testers who beat on Hoster to try and break it.

4. FIXED Background Audio Player Double-click to Play - " In prior versions when you double-click a song in the BA song list, the On button stayed gray and the Off button remained red. We found and fixed the problem." We really should have considered this a NEW feature as we never designed the BA to allow double-clicking a song to play it. We added this in because one of our Beta Testers wanted to do this... a SINGLE USER request added this NEW feature in.

5. FIXED Remove Silence End Removal - "Even if you set the End point on a song to not play silence beyond that point, when the song was played the silence played and the DUR field showed a negative number counting down. We found and fixed the problem." This problem existed because of code we had added in the past, before Remove Silence was added. The prior code fixed a problem with the "DUR" field not showing the current song playing time for MP3 files in earlier Windows releases. Microsoft didn't correctly support MP3 decompression as it competed with their WMA compression. Thus, we had to program a "work-around" that forced our DUR field in the Playlist to allow you to play MP3 files to the end.

6. FIXED Search Dialog Key Change - "This now works, and the Upgrade button now instantly upgrades the Key change field for the selected song in the List window." This code never worked. We didn't have complaints, nor did our Beta Testers find this until just before 4.31 released. We then "finished" this code so you could change the key in the Search dialog when adding the song to the Playlist.

7. FIXED Singer's Dialog Songs Not Appearing - "When you click the Singers button to display its dialog, the first Singer displayed does not show its Songs until you select another Singer, then click the first Singer again. Now the first Singer's Songs will appear the first time." ONE user triggered this request. It was confusing to him, so we changed the operation to prevent this. This was a minor problem, with a simple work-around.

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Some problems are cause by Microsoft changing Windows in an automatic "upgrade", without any warning to us as paid members of MSDN (MicroSoft Developers Network). All of a sudden, our working, bug-free program ceases to work. This type of problem is NOT our fault. We did nothing wrong, yet we will invest Senior Programmer time to address, re-create and develop a work-around fix fot MICROSOFTs created problem. These are considered "NEW" features as they didn't exist before the MS upgrade.

We can't sit back and only support XP, which was the most stable MS OS platform in the recent past. Our new customers have new computers with Windows 7, usually with 64-bit OS installed. Thus, we are forced to evolve. However, existing customers with stable XP computers also want the NEW features we are constantly evolving. It's a Catch-22 situation and I believe we do better than most at supporting both EXISTING and NEW users.

There is a competitor that says you have free upgrades forever, yet they discontinue the product YOU bought within a year, and give their NEW product a new name, and you must pay FULL RETAIL for it... but we hear complaints they don't fix ANY bugs after they make a new release.

MTU does everything in our power to solve each and every reported problem as fast as we can.

* We have spent over $30,000 before to evolve a solution to one problem.

* We took almost 48 months to accumulate enough facts on another problem that finally allowed us to re-create it, only then able to engineer a solution.

* We actively contact those who are willing to help us identify the root cause of their problem. We sometimes come in remotely into their computer, using our knowledge to search and root out the cause. We are extremely effective at doing this.

How we get you a fix is your complaint, so let me address that too. Once we release a new version with NEW features, we anticipate there will be problems and don't start work on the next "NEW FEATURES" release until we are confident that subsequent releases have "fixed" all reported bugs for that Major release. We then set the Install Date (when users can install it) to EARLIER than the Release Date (when it was physically made available). Thus, those who have the right to install the Major release ALSO have the right to install its bug fix releases.

However, once we are past the initial "bug fix" releases, we move on to add new features. Sometimes users have asked for these, and sometimes we have dreamed of them for years... doing many "architectural" upgrades in prior releases in preparation for these new MAJOR features. Once we start a Major development, historically we cannot go backwards and add fixes into the prior released code. In the case of Hoster 4.3x, before we started our new 5.00 with MAJOR new features planned for many years, we duplicated the source code and left behind a set of 4.xx code to allow us to continue bug fixes on the 4.xx code base. We tested 4.32 Beta 1 over the weekend fixing problems related to the Search dialog Preview Play feature. These bugs had never appeared before, and nothing we added in 4.30 or 4.31 "should" have caused them. The problem with this is we then must add the "fixes" into the 5.00 code, which requires testing all over again to make sure ther are no new "bugs" added into this "new" code.

At the insistence of most Hoster users, since late 2008 we have been updating our Import Database with new Brand-DiscID-Track-Title-Artist record definitions to save YOU time importing CDG discs. We have advanced our technique and collection tools to the point we now add in 1,500 - 2,500 new records a week. This is a significant cost, including the web servers to provide for downloading the updated 21MB files. We bundle these upgrades monthly into the CURRENT Hoster release, and make them available within the first week of each month. In the case of 4.32, we expect to release it between October 20 to 22. It will include the then current Import Database. It's Install Date will be the Release Date.

We have tried for years to evolve a way to provide the database separate from the current Hoster release, but so far haven't solve this. We must protect our work as we have legal proof that two other competitors were stealing our work and including it in their products. That will make one think twice about making it accessible in any way, een to our honest users.... fact of life today with Internet theft rampant. It is very complex to protect this significant work. We have spent tens of thousands already in Research and Development towards this end. One day, we may be able to separate it from Hoster, but for now, that is why we don't have a Hoster "upgrade" without the Import Database.

Jim, your record shows have been with us from 2006-02-26 18:51:27 when you ordered Hoster3000n. Thus, you know we work to fix our bugs.

On 2008-07-16 20:15:07 you ordered the Hoster 4 Upgrade. We even allowed you to install Hoster 4.20 release on 2010-05-10 20:11:54, which was 23 months of upgrades, NEW features and bug fixes. Our policy since our inception has been to offer UPGRADES to existing customers, not requiring them to pay a new retail price for our latest work. These Upgrades have always had a price whenever a new X. or X.X release came out as we used to change the RegCode to install a new release.

Keep in mind also that if you upgrade your Windows, most older MTU programs won't run under the new OS until you upgrade. We spent 22 man-months to make Hoster - ONLY Hoster - run with Vista. Luckily, having made that investment, adding Windows 7 support only took several man-months.

This summer, after years of working to make our security as transparent as possible, we implemented a massive upgrade that now allows your EXISTING RegCode to install our latest version, if you have paid the Upgrade price. This makes upgrading almost transparent.

I hope this helps you understand the process we use to create new releases, and why we charge for upgrades.