At 01:18 PM 9/26/97 +-200, you wrote:
>Yesterday a mail arrived in my Inbox from Allen Dick [log in to unmask]
>I have been in touch with Allan in the thread it opened : Does Bidata Work?
 
Yes it works, and it is good looking. Would I pay money for it?
 
>I am Danish living in Denmark and born 1942 (Yes I am not that young any
longer)
 
As one old beekeeper to another let me say a little about why you may
expect to receive some negative feed back about your program and my own
approach to beekeeping software. Any feed back is good and shows there is
an interest.
 
First and foremost is the cost. Most experienced computer users here in the
US do not spend big bucks for programs. I understand the years of hard work
that go into making such programs but it is a "shareware" world out here
and those who do produce commercial programs soon learn the "30 day lesson"
and that is if you can produce a program that others want you have about 30
days to market it before someone else produces one that is bigger and better.
 
Now if your name is BILL GATES you may get away with lasting a little
longer by buying up all your competition or giving away your programs to
hurt others  market but in the end the results are the same...you get a 30
day shot at the market.
 
The beekeeping market is not huge here as few commercial beekeepers who are
the one's that could support a $200 beekeeping program are connected to the
Internet or use a PC in their business. That is slowly changing for sure.
 
The other problem is that some of us are experienced in the use of the PC
and know that today's data base programs are not that hard to change into
useful tools for collecting and analyzing beekeeping data and we look hard
at any programs that are sold as "beekeeping" programs and there has been
many and none that have tried to sell them has made the cut here in the US.
Some of them in my humble opinion have been real attempts to rip off the
beekeeping community, and I am thinking of tax record type beekeeping
programs that were sold to some for many hundreds of dollars that were not
as good as the $50
Money Counts or Quicken programs and several others that are sold to the
public and are more then any beekeeper should ever need for day to day
beekeeping tax records.
 
I don't want to discourage anyone from making beekeeping programs and there
are many different beekeeper's who have put out really nice programs but
would suggest that if you want to sell it then check out the shareware
approach and maybe a $20 price tag and charge for updates, support, or
something.
 
As for beekeepers looking for programs....bee wise and check out what is
available to the general public, the tax record keeping and data base
programs are as about as good as it gets and their cost is reasonable and
because there are tens of thousands users help is easy to get and most of
the time it is free. This is not to say that programs for beekeepers are
not worthwhile because they truly are but they are not for everybody, but
then I have yet to fall for that $50 beekeeping data base sold on the net
by the bee regulators and to this day have never seen one word about how
wonderful it is.
 
IMHO, ttul, the OLd Drone
Los Banos, California