Why would that make you impatient? Wasn't part of this about not enough good feedback? When you give feedback..ask for fixes and nothing is done.. what's the motivation to keep reporting? I doub't many people would like to see WB the best it can be more than I.. seriously. Not sure what you meant by that.

Yes,we whine because we care.We just stopped expecting any results.  

Brad,

I think you're spot on with the content direction and master skinners along with MyColors are great examples of the direction things are heading.

As for the content complaints they seem to be atypical of many other markets such as music, books, etc. As the skinning market gets bigger obviously the number of active, quality skinners is going to decline.

People need to step back and think for a second how much a graphics designer is actually worth. And that's only one aspect of the process.

My participation in beta testing for DesktopX has been limited due to my being on XP and any issue I have had is system specific.

Also, my eyes were opened by the amount of time spent dealing with people on my iReflector gadget. These same issue(s) which were documented in the readme file that everyone decides not to read. At deviantart I got around 50 notes that it "doesn't work" and the answer was in the description.

So, I have to pat everyone at Stardock on the back. Mind if I ask "does customer service and tech support have padded cubicles?

Frogboy, I do not envy the decisions you have to make.


That would be dirt cheap even without the subscription.
It would be nice to see it on the shelves next to Windows though, as customization becomes more main stream you start opening up to more and more casual users. The ultimate casual user picks it up when purchasing the OS/PC.


I think that makes a lot of sense as a business decision, but it is sure to piss a lot of people off.(like I said I don't envy you)



And the market has grown, which means you make it up on quantity.
Regardless though, the cost of development doesn't mean a thing to the customer. Do you think people really care about how much Windows cost to develop? It comes down to how much will the customer pay for a specific feature/functionality.

Don't get me wrong, I don't really have a problem per se with the cost of the product increasing. However when you move the price up, I think people start to want clarity as to what there money is buying exactly. At least I do.




This is a common everyday support occurrence. It sucks, it is probably one of the reasons why support jobs turn over more than any other IT job, but there is no easy solution. Every QA person knows you will never get 100% of all the bugs, while every customer will demand that you do. Meanwhile when people are calling in or posting a problem many times they are pissed off worsening the situation. Good support don't just answer questions, they have to read the customers mood and do their best to resolve that before they can even really start to dig into an issue. QA and support are tough jobs, and if Stardock decides to take the product more mainstream, then this issue will be magnified since full support will be expected, not to mention there will be many more issues posted. But the more mainstream they become the more revenue they can expect.



It is one of my pet peeves when people say that just because someone disagrees with you they are "whining", using the same mentality, everybody is just whining depending on your point of view. That is why my posts here are few and far between. People don't seem interested in a different point of view.

Just a couple thoughts here.

I'm fairly new to the community so I'm sure there are plenty of problems and changes from the past of this community that I am unaware of. From what I've seen in the time I've been browsing through Wincustomize though I think this is the best developer and user integrated relationship I've seen with any product. Unfortunately though no matter what is done from either side of the relationship there will always be problems. Human nature is unavoidable.

As for the beta tester process I would also disagree that charging people extra to be beta testers would be a good idea (referring to a comment made not the original article). At the same time I'm sure people would appreciate a discount on products for being testers but unfortunately that would lead to everyone saying they are willing to be beta testers just to get the discount and then giving the same uninformed comments about their problems.

I would think that with the new Impulse that is on the way maybe it would be a good idea to have the normal section for updates that you have in Stardock Central but have it provide only full release updates. In addition to this add a seperate section in which people can sign up and download beta versions to test. In this section you could include a detailed description of what is expected of beta testers as far as content of reported problems (i.e. "This thing isnt working it's crap" wouldnt be useful information and the people submitting these types of "reports" would lose the ability to access the beta versions.

In addition to this I believe a helpful thing would be to change the Forum front page layout a bit. No matter what you will always get people that just want to complain, or people with valid remarks that just wont pay attention to the proper place for their comments. I think if the front page was changed so that when you first clicked the forum button you then had the options of "Beta Forums", "Stardock Support Forums", "All Other Forums"(which would lead to a page similar to what the front page is now) then you would at least have a better chance of these problems being reported in the correct place rather than spread out among the forums.

Of course making sure these problems are fixed in a timely manner or at least acknowledged and updates given on the progress of fixing them would also be an important factor. From what i see (in this thread) I would think that the people who have mentioned the problems they posted about not being fixed are not people that are complaining just to cause problems but people who are pointing this out in hopes of the problems being fixed because they put alot of time into the skins they create and want to see them perform to the best of their ability. Which of course is good not just for them but for the fact that it means more great skins out there working properly to encourage people to purchase Stardocks products.


As for people complaining about the price of Stardocks products or about paying for Master Skins, I really dont see any merit to the complaints. Stardocks products are very moderately priced for what you get out of them and you make the choice to buy them to begin with. Be sure to consider the fact that if you were to buy ObjectDesktop now and never renew your subscription that it will still work for life and there are so many skins already out there to choose from that you could change your computer theme a couple times a month for years to come. The Master Skins are made by people who take alot of time and make sure they are producing a great product. And as for the prices of the skins how can anyone complain? You pay a small fee for the skin, about the same as youd pay for a single meal for one at a drive thru, and you have it for life not just ten minutes. Also even if you do not want to pay for the Master Skins there are so many great free skins out there by these same people and others that you have alot of stuff to choose from.

As far as rating systems and comments on skins.
There will always be people who do this just to be able to make something and will continue to do it regardless of the ratings they get and there will also always be people who take the ratings to heart. In my personal opinion the ratings arent a big deal. If you really want to judge peoples opinion of your skin then read the comments that are left. I agree it would be nice if more people left comments when they do like your work because it will encourage more people to keep trying to do a better job. Another way to look at it is by the number of downloads you get. As far as the negative comments left on skins the only way you'll ever be able to put a complete end to that is to get rid of the comment section altogether as there will always be people out there who just have to be malicious. By negative I dont mean someone telling you they dont really like the end product and telling you why, I mean people just leaving completely unnecessary comments. I think doing away with comments altogether would create a slow demise of people creating things because then they would never get any positive feedback or appreciation of their work.

I went to check at download.com it says "WindowBlinds - License:Free to try; $19.95 to buy". Can you point us to where it is free?



Unless you make a ton of money and become "evil", they are not interested.



I am pretty sure someone out there thinks that you bought a private island instead.



How is it that you value your time but not others?



If it is not value, I usually don't go there. Move On.



When you buy a car, you get a standard set of tires. If you want fancy, you pay more, a lot more. And when they are worn, you purchase them, the car company does not replace them free.

I agree that there is no equivalent of premium cars here where you can add and modify stuff and pay more to get something to your liking. May be StarDock can come up with something like that.



There could be better option for Master Skins, something like a flash/silevrlight screen where elements of the skin in action is shown to the user, may be even some interactive options.



Or for a starbucks coffee that you just...



I think we can do the same thing here when someone doesn't like their car. They mod it, aftermarket. It's not free though. If you buy from the car manufacturer, you pay a lot more. We miss that option here.



This is another example of Wincustomize content is StarDock content confusion. Is it StarDock or is it community?



People pay for Plus and get almost nothing and there is not much complaint or there is no point in complaining.

I really don't think most people are talking about that level of customization, when you talk about casual users I think most people would just like a different color to choose from, maybe with some racing stripes. Not that the car comparison, or any other is a very good comparison when we are talking about software.



Well confusion here is part of the issue, however at the end of the day it comes down to value perceived by the customer, regardless of who owns the content. As master skinners and Stardock alike sell their products to the customer, it really doesn't matter what they perceive as value but what the people who buy their products perceive as value. IMHO, understanding that simple fact is key to running any business. If you can't cover costs with what the customer feels is a good value proposition, then the business won't last very long.
...Unless of course, you are Microsoft.



Once you have as much of a grip on the market as Microsoft does, you can get away with A LOT. I wonder how much Plus actually sold, not that it matters to Microsoft that much. There may be few complaints because not many people bought it, or perhaps because complaining to Microsoft is not very... productive. Unless it is some kind of serious security flaw, you are not likely to see a fix from Microsoft anytime soon and people kind of give up before getting started. But there are not many companies who can play by Microsoft's rules and survive. Still if Stardock could get Microsoft to let them sell using the Plus brand, it would make the brand actually worth something again. I imagine it work out pretty good for Stardock too.


Totally off topic, who at Stardock is the Raymond E. Feist fan, or is just coincidence?

Me so poor I cant afford a car...I have to ride a freakin' bycycle to the grocery store.(I'm 48 and partially disabled...I look like an idiot)  So when I hear the entitlement crowd WHINING about the Masterskins program,I wanna beat their WHINY little butts.  

That second point can make it no plainer...how absolutely perfect a question that was to pose.

Thank you James.  

Here we go again with the whining. Not sure if those ALL CAPS were pointed at my comment about the word "WHINE" being one of my pet peeves, but I'll bite.

The only here that sound like they are whining is you, and whether or not you can make a successful go of your career choice is of no particular concern to anybody but yourself. Maybe you could do better if you stopped calling your potential customers a bunch of whiners, just a thought though. Maybe if people could listen to those they disagree with, they could find common ground and a mutually beneficial middle ground could be reached. But when you start calling potential customers names, well I wouldn't expect business to take off.

I dont consider the entitlement crowd potential customers.Their minds are pretty much made up on the subject and not likely to change.  

Not true. You have only ever got a few skins with the program. Everything else has been provided by the community for free. You have never paid me or anyone else for the skins you download from WinCustomize. Now we have the Master program which gives a little back to those who have given the most, why is that not fair?

Stardock is now providing some high quality free content. So, in reality, you are getting more for your money.

All you have ever purchased is a skinning program. That is all. The rest came from us. It is very disheartening for skinners to hear such misguided views. Regretably it's all to common.

well said fuzzy

I can't speak for the "entitlement" crowd at large, and I actually don't really consider myself to be "entitled" to anything.

When I first bought OD way back when, the community produced all the skins I could hope for. These days it is rarer and rarer that I find something to my tastes.
I *think* I understand Stardock's mentality behind master skins, and that they are designed to fill an ever increasing gap in community created content. But I didn't buy skins back then, and that is probably why I don't feel like buying them now, regardless of how cheap they are.

The thing is their has been very little discussion by anybody on why the "whiners" don't like master skins. But I'm pretty sure they don't hate master skinners, and I'm also pretty sure they are not all a bunch of software stealing warez hippies. So if these people are reasonable people, one would think that a little discussion would go a long way towards figuring out a scenario that they would find acceptable. Even if it didn't end in a solution, information on customers wants/needs is seldom useless.

They may think their minds are made up and you make think their minds are made up, but when people start talking about the specific problem, often it turns out people aren't as decided about something as they thought they were.

Just think if you only charged $1 for a skin, but sold it to every WoW player you'd be doing pretty good.

I think the point made by SirSmiley "Hire a Skinner" in someother post is the option we are missing here.

This has been discussed many many times. The jist was some (vocal few) didn't want to pay skinners for their time and efforts. They feel the skins should be free and blasted the artists for wanting a lil compensation for their time.

The artists here with the exception of "Stardock Designs" are not in the employ of SD and share skins they build with us freely. A few Masters get the option of posting some skins for sale to help offset expenses etc. (PSP is not cheap and neither are many of the various programs for graphics used).

The entitlement crowd seems to think these artists who can work for months on end building one theme, while spending money out of their own pockets for the programs to build it,owe them all skins for free. They should be thanking the masters/and skinners in general for not closing up shop and going pro leaving them with nothing at all to DL.

IMO it's a slap in the face to the masters who have dedicated years to honing their skills and craft, to complain about the few dollars they ask on a random skin.

Yes I am a fan..This community has dedicated the time and effort to make my PC over the years look as cool as possible and not try to rob me blind while doing so.

The percent of people that are active in the communitiy has decreased with customization going mainstream. There are several reasons for this:

- "The mass effect" - we feel less connected if there are a lot more people involved. Everyone of us here uses Microsoft Windows, but we don't feel as a part of a "Microsoft Community". It's the same effect if you work in a small firm versus working for a huge coorporation. Statistics show clearly that working morale decreases with increasing enterprise size. This effect is not limited to WC only, but is also a problem a lot of the smaller sized sites are struggling with.


- "The software" - OD has just gotten too good. Let me explain this: Where it took days to finish a refined skin in the old days, it would most likely take about a month to release an equal Vista-ready WB6 skins. The same thing goes for IconPackager. This automatically excludes almost everyone with a full-time job. It takes much more to tackle a project if you know that it will take you months before you see a result, than if you know that you are able to finish it in a weekend or two.

This can be clearly seen here by the masters skinners here, most of which are either currently unemployed, on disability leave, retired or are learned graphics-artists that already master the tool of the trade (Photoshop etc.....).


- "The librarys" - With WB and IP out of the league of most hobby customizators, there are the smaller libraries like bootskin, OD-icons, XP-Logons...... . But seriously, how many Firefox-icons, and Vista bootskins do we need?


Even though the above points might explain the decrease in active skinners, it does not fully explain (with exception of the first point maybe) why feedback to beta-releases is decreasing as well.

Possible solutions:
1. A different beta-conzept as already mentioned by some people above. SDC is an ideal tool do distribute the betas to a "core-userbase". You problably know by now the people that have provided good feedback in the past. Why not distribute the betas to them for free? Most betas are already time-limited so you wouln't have to give away your software.

2. Better communication: This has been mentioned in the past, and it usually gets better for a short time but declines again after a while. It is frustrating if we provide feedback on (sometimes major) bugs, but we don't get a reaction beyond: "we forward it to the developer" or "we are aware of this".

Why not inform us if you have other programs currently in the pipeline and you can't work on it right away? Why not removing that "DesktopX coming this months" from the webpage if you see that it is not possible to release it in time? Why not keep updating the release plan as originally posted by Zoomba last Spring? Why announce CursorFX as "officially released" and sell it without mentioning that it is still a beta?


I can understand Frogboys' furstration and I can see that going "commercial" is most likely the best way for any software company to go if a certain popularity is reached. Stardock will loose even more of the power-user basis which can provide feedback on betas, but it will certainly gain a lot of first-time users who will solely rely (and expect) Stardock to provide them with smoothly running software.

I personally can see that developer costs are increasing and filling in for the WB and IP-skins that were created in the past by the user-base, doesn't come cheaply either. I therefore certainly would support a price increase as long as my favourites (e.g RightClick) aren't dropped. However, I don't think I would support an OD-version solely based on "My Colours".

Well I want to raise another point here : I am all for the Master Program and purchase skins, but please let us keep our value for a longer amount of time, same as we do now with an OD subscription and the updated apps. I have lots of purchased skins that were outdated pretty soon (Toon even had some bugs never updated) and even don't look right with newer versions of WB (not to mention Vista). I would even pay an update fee for them. That's for master skins and also official SD suites. For example, what the heck is the problem to let Paul do some live folders for the Apogee suite ??? It won't take him days of time.

Also at some point I personally simply gave up at suggestions for programs and errors as at some point I didn't feel taken serious in many accounts. Either the conversation stopped right in the middle and I didn't hear ever again from the developer (or even other instances like public relations for other matters), or simple requests are simply ignored (a prominent example is that we are still not able to save rightclick configuration although requested by a lot more users for really YEARS now).

And critics, even constructive ones ? Well I see where it brought me after so many years at WC, purchasing nearly everything SD has to offer and contributing 'some' content, I see people promoted (don't get this wrong, I am lucky for them) every month, who I don't even know or have noticed on this site.

But one thing is clear for me : If SD cuts all the little apps from Object Desktop to contain only the well selling ones, I will feel bad about it and 1st time after those many years consider carefully, if I will extend my OD subscription or not. I am no milk-cow and SD really can't complain about me not supporting them...

Am I frustrated about the direction SD is taking sometimes ? Yes I am.

People get into customizing things so they can show them off. Since people rarely see our customized computers, it will never take off like everyone has hoped.

Perhaps someone can work there way into Michael Dell's bed and get Windowblinds and Iconpackager pre-installed on all Dell systems.

Looking at the 'relative' origin of skinning...to our 'ancestral' site [skinz.org] ... the total number of community members/users was small, with a quite high proportion of active contributers/involvement.... certainly on a much greater order of magnitude than what we now have here...with over three million members/users...the question is just how many active people are there now involved in skinning and/or the forums?

The answer is...probably quite a bit more than back then... but a much significantly smaller percentage of total user-base.

Instead of many/most interaction being between skinners/programmers/bug-hunters and the odd user or ten, we now have a disproportionately large potential for 'just' users who have no interest in the societal aspect of skinning...but just want what they paid for to 'effing work'.

This IS the change.  It's the fault of skinning's newer mainstream success, as the focus shifts to a larger proportion of new people with no history or interest in the history of how skinning used to be [?] a symbiotic relationship between skinner/proggy-maker/user.

Ask anyone who has been around skinning a long time...they all will have cut their teeth on failed proggies and chasing new bug permutations.  I even remember many years ago Neil Banfield ask some skinner one time how he'd managed to get WB to 'do that'? - and HE was the coder...

These days, if it's going to be all about help-desks and demands of working software [or else] and refunds cos it did something unexpected then it's probably going to HAVE TO get into a new price bracket...like all those other Commercial wares...eg. Photoshop ... with commensurate pricing.

Back 'at the start' Windowblinds was probably a pretty good deal [price-wise]...so 8 or 9 years later it's ridiculously good.

Who's to say that what had/has kept skinning a 'cottage industry' is generally the skinnables are so low priced that they [the proggies and the skinners and skinning in general] are not taken seriously?

The commercial viability of skinning has been demonstrated by such projects as Mycolors and the Master skins, so skin users [some] are taking it seriously enough to liberate wallet moths...perhaps it's now time to rethink the Commercial status of the [SD] products themselves...

I have written 3 responses to this and deleted them all.

Paying for content (IE Skins/Gadgets): Why is it that everyone looks at the master skinners like we are ripping people off for something they already paid for? Most of us do not work for SD, and are not being paid to make skins, gadgets, etc. We have paid our dues and made dozens if not hundreds of FREE skins/gadgets, and when we start to get better at our "ART" and try to make a few (and i mean FEW) $'s from this ART we get yelled at by people who have never even tried to draw a line before.
Let me put it this way, Do you have an iPOD? If so, did you pay big $ for it? ok, did you pay for the content on it, or did you EXPECT apple to GIVE you songs, videos? Or did you go torrent all your music? Its the same as a phone, I have seen people pay $3+ for a stupid ass 15 second RING-TONE, and not think anything about it. But a $4.95 gadget that took someone weeks or MONTHs to make, test, and refine is slammed for being a money grubber? WTH? - Grow up, pay for things you like, HERE and everywhere, or.. Make your own. And there are dozens of people here that will help you make your own.

Feedback on products: I have seen this go several ways, I have posted numerous posts on DX problems, bug, feature requests, some of them were fixed in days (hell in hours on 1) and other just get ignored. And at some point you get tired of bringing up the same problems over and over, so you stop giving feedback. I'm sure that has happened to all of us. I know this happened to me with CursorFX, it keep messing up over and over, I posted on this, gave people the feedback, and the only response i got (from sd and wd people) was to un-install it all, and re-install it. When i did that and it still didnt fix things, and posted on it still doing the same thing (moving the cursor UNDER the menus) I get told that i need to uninstall again. So we give up. If you want the feedback, have a dedicated place for it. I think thats the main issue. There are too many places here to post on DX for example. Multiple places to post, if we had 1 forum location for each product called BUGs and Feature Requests 1 for each product. That would be somewhere that SD personell need to monitor it not just WC Admins. This could help a lot. Instead of having dozens (or hundreds) of posts on the same issues all over the place.

Prices: I agree that if WB was a little more expensive and came with a "skin pack" or maybe pull the best skins together and make some cool packs that way, it would be good.

I have seen this community change from mostly skinners to mostly users and of course this is because the software has become easier to use, and more main-stream. I think everyone needs to ATTEMPT to make a skins, wb skins, dx widgets, etc. Just to see how hard they are (or how easy..lol).

Brad, I wish you luck with all these issues, its not going to be easy, but there are a LOT of us out here who love SD and are here to work WITH SD on making it better for all of us.