Approximately one week after removing the software installation CD from all Meazuras leaving the company, Aceeca(the maker of my favorite industrial PDA; the Meazura) decided to put it back in – the official press release is below:
We have received a lot of feedback from the e-mail sent a week ago regarding
the Installation Software Update. Aceeca would like to thank you all for this.While making a website link available for the installation software in place of
a CD-ROM was intended to provide up-to-date files to our users and streamline
our production line, we realize this will cause an inconvenience to some of our
customers.Therefore, we have decided to continue to provide the CD-ROM as a standard item
in our kit, while having the download link always available for the latest
updates.
We believe this will better meet our customers overall requirements.Thank you for your continuous support and if you have any comments, please
e-mail me direct, cmesmin@aceeca.com
For me, this is the (disappointing) end of a very interesting experiment. As I already said in the original announcement, I think that this step was a great idea, as it allowed Aceeca to keep on improving the device’s software/firmware platform even in the product’s lifetime – with minimal interaction on customer end.
But, apparently, many of Aceeca’s customers weren’t ready for this (radical) step – and it shows Aceeca’s commitment to their customers happiness that the CD was reinserted. Kudos to them for that.
Nevertheless, I would like to see if Aceeca kept the web firmware idea. A possible method for this would be to put a red ribbon around the CD saying sth like “if possible, visit www.foo.com for drivers and updates instead of using this CD”; informing customers of the existence of this URL…
With CD? Without CD? What do you think?
P.s. TamsPalm and TamsPPC get read by Aceeca folks – I am sure that they will chime into the discussion. Commenting is free and anonymous!!
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I think that putting CDs in device kits is totally anachronistic. I never used one of those CDs in years, but always got the newest version from the suppliers homepage.
Apple is again leading the market here, if you buy an iPod today, you don’t get a CD any more, if you do not have iTunes yet, you can get it with 3 clicks from the Apple homepage. This allows cutting costs a bit, but a lot more important makes the packaging a lot smaller and nicer and also makes sure you get the most current version even if your iPod sat in the dealers shelf for month before you bought it.
Hi Simon,
it IMHO all comes down to the target audience.
Tech savvy audiences wont need a CD. Beginners will.
I wrote up my thoughts on why Aceeca can omit the CD in the original article…no need to load the DB with extra text
.
Best regards
Tam Hanna