ORIGINAL: FreakyDude
Your kidding me right?
You can NOTseriously make the comment that software is developed using Beta trials as a justification for using people tounknowingly trial hardware.
First off Software in the beta version is knowingly offered as trial product and people know the potential need for fixes because of bugs. If you knowingly say there may be issues then there should be no problem.
Name a company that SELLS hardware in a beta version without telling the potential clients that it has issues.
The one issue that Clark has is range? really? what about the fact they say there board is plug and play when it clearly is not, I have yet to see anyone post anything about buying one of these boards and not having to do some kind of soldering or mod to their tank before being able to use it.
Clark sells the board with damage reduction then ships it without it! Here in my country that is illegal and it should be. The purchaser should at least be offered the option of changing his order. Oh yes- they will fix it for free but it takes how long to return it and who pays for the postage? Yes that is a real good board, buy it and wait 2 weeks so you can send it back on a 4 week round trip because they shipped product that is not up to snuff, Question is did they know it and we can all guess they must have because they purposely removed damage.
Hey while we are fixing the board we will add the extra range that should have been available from the day you purchased it.
What kills me the most is people that post a defence for these actions when clearly there are none,
There is no excuse in my opinion for treating customers like guinea pigs without asking if they want to run on a wheel for a drop of water and a few pellets.
The important thing here is what did we as consumers assume, and what was the original Clark promise?.
I think a lot of assumptions were made on what features it would have. Every one assumed it would be at least completely compatible with Tamiya, when in fact the first version wasn't. Did Clark ever claim it to be 100% compatible?. Clark is not the first person to put out a "Tamiya compatible system" that is only partially compatible. So be careful of stringing Clark up over this.
RE Battle damage. Clarks facts sheet said the TK 30 would have battle damage, but the TK 20 did not have a check in that box when I looked. When I first found out about this I went and checked his site, and I realized that he never had this feature checked off as available. Not sure when he made that change or if he made the change on his website, but all I know was when I checked the battle damage was not an option of the TK 20.
I am hoping the lesson to be learned by any developer is that if you start talking Tamiya, it has to be 100% compatible in function, and not just give and receive hits.
The reason I have harped on about minimum standards for IR systems, and that the Tamiya standard should be adopted as the bare minimum, is because that is what consumers ultimately want. Anything less will cause all kinds of issues like this. I knew this was going to happen. I have got on my soap box many times talking about the importance of this fact, but it falls on deaf ears.
There is a standard that all developers can build to. It is the Tamiya standard, and if this thread is any example you would be doing yourself a favor by paying heed to what the paying consumer is demanding or suffer the eventual negative feedback.
That is all I am going to comment on as it underlines the importance that this hobby has minimum standards for IR systems to save all this ill will.
I am prepared to be patient with this, because it has the potential to be a game changing piece of hardware.