ComponentOne FollowUp

Ok, I'm nearly done playing catch-up from the MVP Summit, and I wanted to take a few minutes to respond to the interesting conversation that went on regarding my ComponentOne experience while I was away.

My first draft of this post was very emotional and incoherent, but in a way very cathartic. It let me cut past the garbage and get straight to the point. So here it goes.

Under normal circumstances, I may agree with Mike in that it's up to a developer to do due diligence when working with a component. In many cases, a reporting component may not work as desired, or that cool chart component you got from Vendor X may not support Gantt charts. This, however, was not one of those cases. This was a spell checking component. Spell checking is a binary operation. There is no "wiggle room"; nothing is open to interpretation. Either it works or it doesn't. In this case, it didn't. It wasn't the code, it wasn't “user error“, it was a faulty component. One that I got for free, but that other people shelled out $300 clams for.

My question is, why is one of the biggest component vendors on the market scamming people by selling a component that doesn't work? I mean, I know every component doesn't have problems, but it's not like it was a situational problem, like that fact that ScrollingGrid 1.X does not render properly when the DataGrid paging is turned on, but works every other time. The function to spell check a string of HTML returned exactly what you passed in, and this bug was there for 4 successive releases.

It's really nice that their component checks as-you-type, and does the little red squiggly lines under the text, just like Word, but if it doesn't correct the text when it's done checking, what good is it? Was it too much to ask for a spell checker to give me the corrected spelling? Call me crazy, but I don't think so.

What they gave away in the Microsoft VB.NET Resource Kit was a beta in the guise of a release product. Usually, beta testers get free copies of the product when they are done testing. Had I known I was beta testing a product, I would have looked elsewhere, without wasting 4 hours debugging why it wasn't giving me what I was expecting.

One must remember, this was not for a "mission-critical" app either. It was for the tool that I'm using to write this post, VisualBlogger 2004, which as of this point will be a free tool for the world. Because I'm not making money off the tool (at least, in the short term) there is no way on earth I'm gonna pay for a component that was supposed to be free.

After several conversations at the MVP Summit, I found out that I'm not the only one that has had issues with ComponentOne. In fact, 9 out of every 10 people I talked to there had a negative experience with C1. 90%. Wow. That's a huge number. And this is one of the top 5 component vendors in the industry. Hmm... makes you think, doesn't it? Well, hopefully this situation made Microsoft think about C1's position in future resource kits.

Now, Mike said in his posts that he was trying to be objective. Don't think he was objective as he would like to believe, but I'm not going to say anything about my objectivity. Not only am I a customer, but I'm a vendor myself, so I can hardly claim any kind of objectivity. I can't help feeling like my main argument, and the point I was trying to get at, has still been missed. I dunno.

In my corporate blog, I'll address some of the other issues that Mike raised regarding my company's business model, and some of the changes that are on the horizon. Watch for it later tomorrow.

4 Comments

  • "Me to"



    bugs they admited to but did not have fixes for was the first thing....



    tryied the "grids" and saw *ZERO* benifit from them.



    got the web menu to work...

    checked and found that any web dist needs a "Per server + CPU *n" fee

    so for just selling a client an app that uses the menu controll it was like 700-800 bucks!



    went and found skmmenu on gdn.com that does the same thing and has a zero cost.



    now lets be clear:

    I'd gladly pay a "One TIme" fee for the control dist.

    I could see adding a *small* per site fee....



    but 400 bucks for a web site to have a menu???



    and the price of this by the way is not listed.... you have to call them

    and the first thing they say is:



    "that offer expired, you need to buy a new version to develop with"

    I had to tell the twit about 5-6 times that my dev system was working fine.... that i needed the fee refered to in the license document!



    so they seem to be set to get us to buy a new version of the dev setup but don't want to talk about just putting the bits on a clients server.



    something very wrong there....

  • I have read through all the components. Component One's reply to my problem with their reporting tool was to get the latest version. Out of my free license of course. Their reply to this was TOO BAD!!!! They have good stuff, but I am not keen to pay for their development cycle and debug their components for them.



    This is something they can have a look at.



  • Robert,



    I'm still uneasy with your analysis but do accept that it is your opinion. Any further comments would just rehash my points causing you to rehash yours, ad infinitum.



    HOWEVER, I take SERIOUS expection to this:

    "Don't think he was objective as he would like to believe..." You are making an accusation for which you have absolutely no basis. I guard my repution very carefully and do my absolute best to ensure my integrity in all things.



    I would greatly appreciate it if you would apologize and acknowledge that accusing me of being disingenuous was not appropriate.

  • Looking from the outside:



    Robert did not accuse you of being disingenuous, he said that he doesn’t think you were as objective as you would like to believe and that is for the same reason he claims no objectivity.



    The point is that you are thinking you can be objective about this issue but the truth is that you can’t because you are an interested party who makes a profit by selling products from this company (or from competitors), so I don’t see why he would have to apologize for stating the obvious.

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