Shareware Survey

[JOHN WAGER]

I've got over 500 disks of shareware downloaded, and I'm the shareware
librarian for a local users group. I've registered several programs
that I use. Perhaps an anecdote would help a bit. I tried at least
7-8 communications programs, starting with PC-TALK. The one that had
the best features for me was GT-POWER. Bet you've never heard of it,
right? Everybody knows Qmodem, or Procomm, but a couple of years ago
GT was just as good. Still is, in terms of features. But two things
made it fade a bit: It came in so many flavors and varieties, in so
many big .ZIP files, that it was difficult to install. And an even
bigger problem: It had a feature to increase the time it took to start
the program every time you used it, going up to about 30 seconds pause.
I remember dozens of BBS'ers complaining about that, and new users would
see those messages and say "Thanks, no thanks" to the program. The
author posted messages defending his choice of method in encouraging
registrations, and he is certainly entitled to try whatever he wants to
in order to do that, but the result is that few people I know on BBS's
use GT POWER. There are some BBS's that use its host mode, but few
callers use it. Ask the author what is percentage is of registrations;
I suspect it's a higher percentage than other programs, but fewer total
than Procomm, because it just wasn't the "thing" to use. And the main
reason it wasn't the "thing" to use was that it had an annoyance at
the start-up screen. So there's one
"disincentive" to registration, if people don't want to sample the
program in the first place.