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Is GemX Another ADM?
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Posted by Daly de Gagne
Jun 23, 2008 at 04:52 PM
I n my request on GemX Products on Sale, I received the following response from Mike, for which I thank him a great deal:
“You might want to follow this thread at Donationcoder.com before you make a decision about Do-Organizer: http://www.donationcoder.com/Forums/bb/index.php?topic=9827.0”
When I went to the site, I found 14 pages of kvetching about GemX’s lack of response to user’s concerns, virtual disappearance with no apparent explanation from the Internet for long time periods, then the explanation they were changing servers, etc.
It sounds worse than the antics of Eric and Arnie with ADM, and I cannot help whether, like Eric and Arnie, the GemX folk will end up pushing broom on the footpaths at the Beijing Olympics or feeding panda refugees from the earthquake zone at the Beijing Zoo. (References to Eric’s love affair with China as the great, trusted hope for ADM). If GemX is about to go belly-up I want to know. It is of interest that the trial periods are remarkably short on this sale, and it looks like the company is certainly trying to get an influx of cash in a hurry.
And here I am, right up there among the great, but somewhat naive, ADHD Crimpers of all time, about ready to put his money down on Doorganizer because it seems like it can do it all. I cannot test everything in the five or so days remaining in the test period. What if there is a glitch and no company support, or worse, a glitch and no company.
What makes me worry even more is the same kind of Ericisian silence from GemX as we got from ADM in the days it was moving behind the curtain, wizard of Oz-like?
I am going to send a copy of this post to GemX because, after looking at many all-in-one (ie. with email) type PIMs since going to my new laptop, I like Doorganizer, at least in terms of feature sets, the best. It has a built-in tabbed browser, diary capability, year-planning, financial record capability, etc.
It does all and more that Debrief does—I like Debrief for the way it approaches notes, etc.
It may not do more than SQLNotes ends up doing, and I am still trying to climb that learning curve—Pierre if you could get your own email client, it’d sure be nice. SQLNotes, I have no doubt, has a great future, and may make Pierre a very, if not rich, shall we say affluent, gentleman. He seems of the same ilk as Tom Davis (a compliment of highest order).
In the silence, we need a word of some kind from GemX. Please.
Mike, again, thanks bro. I appreciate it.
Daly
Posted by Ian Goldsmid
Jun 23, 2008 at 09:36 PM
Hi Daly
The main show stopper for me with Gemx the horribly long winded way of linking one thing with another. Just try that one feature, and cconsider how annoyed you might get if you create lots of items in DO and want to do a lot of linking. Contract that with how easy linking is in Personal Brain, Ultrarecall and others.
Then add to that the GEMX created a burgeoning Forum and then just closed it down with no prior notice one day out of the blue - and that in general over the years I can confirm that while at some times support can be very immediate, at other times it totally disappears from sight.
I advise steer clear - I suspect with DO they’ve bitten off more that they can chew so to speak.
Regards, Ian Goldsmid
Posted by Ian Goldsmid
Jun 23, 2008 at 09:37 PM
Sorry - annoying typo corrections :-)
Ian Goldsmid wrote:
>Hi Daly
>
>The main show stopper for me with Gemx DO is the horribly long winded way of linking
>one thing with another. Just try that one feature, and consider how annoyed you might
>get if you create lots of items in DO and want to do a lot of linking. Contrast that with
>how easy linking is in Personal Brain, Ultrarecall and others.
>
>Then add to that the fact that
>GEMX created a burgeoning Forum and then just closed it down with no prior notice one
>day out of the blue - and that in general over the years I can confirm that while at some
>times support can be very immediate, at other times it totally disappears from
>sight.
>
>I advise steer clear - I suspect with DO they’ve bitten off more that they can
>chew so to speak.
>
>Regards, Ian Goldsmid
Posted by Thomas
Jun 24, 2008 at 12:40 AM
No proof for that, but I don’t think they are going to disappear, they have been around for long time.
As someone with way longer history with them than I have, remarked either here or on Donationcoder in the past, they have those periods of complete silence and then they will reemerge with a new release.
Actually the whole Donationcoder thread to me is more about the amateur communication from their side annoying quite a few users. Forum deleted is the major one. It included a numerous posts about users not being sent their license codes after purchase - that’s common due to junk filters etc., but they didn’t follow-up appropriately (eg. using other channels). Take those two (forums deleted and codes not sent), and you create a bunch of annoyed users happy to discuss their frustrations to lengths on any forum that will host such thread.
It seemed as if they might have been a bit burnt-out on occasions and taking long to answer. Or had too much of work in real jobs and couldn’t find a spare time for Gemx.
What annoyed me a bit was their excuse around that time about getting so many sales that they are not handling it and all the support on time, or something to that extent - I do have some experience with that, and while I might be wrong, all the stats available compared with stats of other comparable projects indicated to me that they might have highly exaggerated in that respect.
I hope they will eventually come with the new version one day, the plans they laid out when the forum was working were promising.
Posted by Mike H
Jun 26, 2008 at 11:09 AM
You’re welcome, Daly. I was fairly active on the GemX forum and was one of the people who went to the site and found it was down - permanently. Many of the forum members surfaced on DonationCoder and were made to feel welcome. Many emails were sent to Peter at GemX asking for an explanation.
I believe that the GemX staff may only be Peter and one other person - and that they were trying to please too many people with limited resources. I think if they had just said something like that to the forum members, we would have understood. As I recollect, a number of folks tried contacting GemX and sent them both content and links from DonationCoder articles. I’m not sure if much happened, as a result. I think Peter is a decent guy, but became totally overwhelmed.
Meanwhile, I stopped using DO and actually returned to Ecco, while waiting for Pierre to get a calendar into SQL Notes - he’s projecting mid-July. I’m pretty sure he followed the GemX forum and I know he reads DonationCoder. My feeling is that he is proceeding carefully and is trying not to bite off more than he can chew. Pierre is a man of integrity and I have a lot of confidence that he’ll succeed with SN.
Mike
Mike