bchurch@oucsace.cs.OHIOU.EDU (Bob Church) (11/15/89)
My apologies for cluttering the feed with one last note on this subject. While the idea of "test driving" a piece of software does indeed have merit there is a major problem. Judging a piece of software when you do not have access to the manuals, customer support, etc. can be very misleading. I had one person tell me that he would never buy Appleworks because any program that would not do block moves was worthless! As programs (including games) become more and more complex this problem increases. One thing that would help is honest, straightforward reveiws by magazines etc. One of the reasons that I am not renewing my subscription to NIBBLE is the incredibly fawning attitude of their game reveiwers. It's not *too* great an exageration to depict a summary as "While the disk crashed repeatedly and the game did not seem to make sense and the manual was missing, the guality of packaging was remarkable. I would suggest purchasing this game so that you can form your own opinion." Well, you know what I mean. If you *really* want to try a piece of software to see if it is worth buying do the author the service of borrowing the entire package. Our local dealer will loan *any* piece of software to our users group to demo. We have no vested interest in sales and run the software during a meeting giving users an honest chance to see what they are buying. Bob Church att!oucsace!bchurch