by stecenko » Sat Apr 07, 2012 10:23 am
Here's another aspect of the problem.
I wrote a little application to keep track of people buried in cemeteries. There are many rural churches closing down and the cemetery records are in shoe boxes.
I wrote this cheap application so one of the volunteers could enter the names, date of death, plot location. It was really nice.
I bought a good setup.exe creator and had a downloadable demo copy on my web site. Purchasers could buy directly from the web site with a charge card. I figured I'd be rolling in money.
But, no. I was rolling in grief. I was getting calls about problems installing on Vista, on Windows 7, on Commodore 64s. I spent more time tweaking my setup.exe creator than I did writing the application. I haven't sold a copy in years and yesterday one of the purchasers phoned for help because his old XP broke down and he's trying to install my app on an old Windows 7 computer that his brother-in-law isn't using. It turns out that his brother-in-law isn't using it, because the hard drive is jammed, it's too slow, the screen is 600x800. In other words, it's a piece of junk. But, my client paid me $100 about 4 years ago and wants me to help him.
Richard Stecenko
Interactive Computer Services Inc.
Victoria, British Columbia
204.453.2052