not feelin\' the love with TKC

[aixman]

Since kino2 didn\'t seem to work correctly and reading multiple posts praising the tkcvideo product, I decided to break out the wallet and give it a try.  

video skips, blurred colors, sound out of sync

I drop an email to see if I have any options and my reply is \"we don\'t support our products on non-Sharp roms\", which I didn\'t see anywhere on the website.

any suggestions?

[havoc]

I don\'t think you\'re the only frustrated TKC less-than-satisfied customer.

[samxiao]

use MPlayer , works great on my OZ

[slocaus]

Since kino2 didn\'t seem to work correctly and reading multiple posts praising the tkcvideo product, I decided to break out the wallet and give it a try.    

video skips, blurred colors, sound out of sync

I drop an email to see if I have any options and my reply is \"we don\'t support our products on non-Sharp roms\", which I didn\'t see anywhere on the website.

any suggestions?

Call your credit card company and get your money back for a defective product.  That is your only choice.  Do it now.  I know others who have.  I waited too long, expecting them to \"fix\" it.  That was 18 months ago.  Call your credit card company.  Do it now.

[Anonymous]

email me if you want to, i can probably create something that will work on your 860 clamshell.

http://home.earthlink.net/~cresho/

cresho@earthlink.net

I can probably set something up....i just made a linux box so you choose your codec, software, and I work on something to fit your need.  That way when i finaly purchase a 860, i can benefit from it as well and maybee others too.

[Anonymous]

the kompany is a scam. stay away from them. none of their crap works as advertised and they take months to implement the most trivial bugfix. they hook the marks with the pretty pictures but its all smoke and mirrors.

[markb]

I just bought 3 products from theKompany.
I suppose the software is cheap so I can\'t complain that much. But I\'m still disappointed.
When you unpack the zip file you get from them you see a README file.
That tells you all the negative stuff you wish you\'d been told before you handed over your money.

both tkcCalendar and tkcAddressBook remove the existing versions of those applications.  On the older 5x series and pre-3.10 ROM it was possible to put back the original apps through a hard reset, this is no longer possible.

If I\'m reading that correctly it sounds like if I install tkcCalendar then I\'ll lose the Calendar app that was built in, and won\'t be able to get it back. I\'m not very happy about that.  So I haven\'t installed it yet. Not sure if I\'m going to now.

The tkcEditor seems ok, until you realise you can\'t get at the menus with the Menu key. So you have to get the stylus out in the middle of text editing. Very frustrating. (I\'d rather have gvim!)

tkcCard does seem good so far.
I originally installed it on the SD card.
The app was very hard to use as some buttons were tiny (their icon images were missing.)
I uninstalled and re-installed to Internal memory, then it worked OK and the buttons displayed correctly.

To be fair, it does say in the README that it can only be installed on removable media if it is has a Linux filesystem (eg ext2).
(My SD card doesn\'t have a Linux file system)

I bought 3 products.
I\'m happy with one (tkcCard)
Disappointed with anothter (tkcEdit)
And I\'m not sure I want to install the 3rd (tkcCalendar)

Still, I\'ve heard other people say nice things about their products.
But I\'m disappointed.   :-(

- Mark

[anonuk]

I am annoyed as i bought a bunch of their applications for my 5500, and now that I have a C860 they are useless to me.
Here are the apps i got, and my view on them - inc the ones i still use on my 860:

tkcAddressBook - This one i still use, just seemed more useable than the other PIMS and it uses XML format for easy import/export
tckCalendar - I use qualendar instead of this, even the built it calendar on the 860 was better. My GF preferred the other calendar apps to the tkc one on my old 5500
tkcFTP - I still have this installed cos i do a lot of ftp stuff for my web business, but i use opieftp just as often as the tkcone and i wouldnt buy it again
tkcMahjong - Doesnt work on my 860, my gf uses it on her 5500, she likes it - but there are other freeware alternatives also
tkcEditor - Is good but slow, i use zeditor nowadays, but tkceditor is still installed.
tkcGallery - tximage and the built in imagepad on the 860 are just as good, i dont use this anymore
tkcExplorer - since i found TreeExplorerQt i havent used this program at all, dont have it installed even.
tkcKapital - I found this almost completely useless, i use opie-checkbook and expensetracker instead
tkcPlayer - This one was good for oggs, but i dont use it on my 860 - i gave it to my gf for the 5500
tkcJabber - This one i use daily, it works well and i found it very usefull for all the instant messaging networks - only problem is I cant go invisible - only away modes.

In conclusion, the only ones i would buy now if i had none of them were tkcAddressBook (just cos i find it useful, if limited and better than the other pims ive tried although maybe abook is better?) and tkcJabber (as none of the other IM programs worked well for me).

The others were of little use, i would consider them a better buy if half of them werent currently unused due to the lack of a free upgrade to the 7x0 versions, but definitely not essential.

The only reason i bought so much softare was to: a) try to support zaurus developers b)the discounts on the bulk purchases ended up cheaper than buying less software! c)there was not as much freeware available at the time for the 5500.

I have since learnt from my mistakes and will probably not buy commercial linux software in the future, i trust the opensource stuff a lot more and the support from the authors is usually much better!

[clivel]

I have since learnt from my mistakes and will probably not buy commercial linux software in the future, i trust the opensource stuff a lot more and the support from the authors is usually much better!

As a commercial developer, I am probably a bit biased, but I think that it is  rather unfair tarring all commercial developers with the same brush. Like in open source, there is good and bad amongst commercial software. I can\'t atest to the quality of TKC software, never having used any, but  I feel that if sofware is try before you buy, people will avoid landing up paying for software that doesn\'t meet their expectations.

My application (SafeDee), is try before you buy. I don\'t know how many people have tried it and not bought it, but I don\'t know of anyone who has bought it and asked for a refund.
I generally try and answer support problems within 24hours, but it is more often than not within an hour or two. When the Cxx series came out, I upgraded the software to support the new devices at no extra cost, and if and when the 6000 devices come out, I will do my best to make sure that it supports these as well.
Regards,
Clive

[bluedevils]

Many points to comment on.

Kino2 has mplayer bundled in with it because it is the GUI interface for mplayer.  It works on my 760 no problem and I have no idea why it would not work on your 860

I can confirm that clivel has good standing in this community, but he might as well be open source since he\'s not really making a profit with all the work he puts into it.  BTW his app is one of the better selling apps around.

Because it is hard to run a business in this community, I can see why tkc would want to be paid for the work porting their apps to work better on a higher res display.  I can also understand the frustration of paying more.  I bought a new DVD burner for my PC and I had to purchase an upgrade of Nero so that it would work with the new burner.  It\'s nothing new.

tkc does have demos for many of their apps.  tkcVideo works for me and is more refined than kino2.  Kino2 makes up for refinement with better performance.

I have tkccalendar, tkctodo and tkcaddressbook and they do not replace the sharp PIMs.  It was changed to this way a while ago.

Listen to cresho as many people have flawless playback using tkcvideo because of him.

tkc\'s PR can be rough, but so can some of the customers.  I am dissapointed with the speed of their transfer to sqlite, but I am eager to see if it will become a killer app.  Other than the PIMs, I haven\'t had any troubles with their apps.

BTW ko/pi rocks!!

[markb]

After being critical of Tkc, I\'d like to add something positive.
Sometimes you can pay nothing for some software and still be disappointed.
But other times, you can be really impressed and want to hand over some cash!

I\'ve just downloaded some applications, and they\'ve exceeded my expectations.
Now I know how good they are I\'d be happy to pay for them.

Stage One (trial version)
http://killefiz.de/zaurus/showdetail.php?app=1008

Tree!Explorer QT
http://killefiz.de/zaurus/showdetail.php?app=1631

Advanced Alarm Clock
http://my-zaurus.narod.ru/qpealarmclock.html
(The link from the Software Index is broke)

They all work very well, and seem very polished.
If I\'d have bought them from Tkc I\'d be a happy customer! :-)

- Mark

[anonuk]

I agree, some of the freeware out there could easily be shareware/commercial (its great to have them free though). Thats one of the great things about the zaurus/linux community, that so many ppl donate so much of their time for free.

Clivel: I didnt mean to tar all developers with the same brush (i am hoping to release some java stuff for the z), but just that I have come to rely more on open source software over the last few years, as a viable alternative to buying software. Safedee is a great program, i would buy it if i used a password manager often enough - i was impressed at how quickly it was ported to the 7x0.

I have been dissapointed by tkc\'s approach, but i will give other commercial stuff a chance - especially if there is a demo available. Also, ive found that individual developers (as opposed to companies like the kompany) tend to provide faster feedback and better support for their software.