Again, I post this for the information it contains. I hope this settles
the issue I inadvertantly started. I appreciated this clarification and
thank Mr. Eisberg for his concern.

Subject:
Credibility
Date:
Sun, 15 Jun 1997 11:54:19 -0400 (EDT)
From:
SBSP at aol.com
To:
ajstudio at ptialaska.net


Mr. Sorensen:

Because I feel the credibility of Santa Barbara Software Products is at
stake, I must ask you to read one more e-mail concerning BirdBase for
Windows
and SoftWindows.

I have just finished phone calls to Mr. Norton, and to his nephew Rick
Fernald. Norton is not very knowledgeable about computers and uses
Fernald
as a computer consultant. I have learned that the situation is more
complicated than I thought:

When I first read the postings on Tweeters, I looked at our records and
found
we sold a DOS version of BirdBase four or five years ago for use by
Norton
on an older Mac running SoftPC. That is what I thought Norton was using
when
he quoted 26 hours as the time required to resort his database into
chronological order. But I have learned that about two years ago Norton
bought a newer Mac running SoftWindows 2.0, which emulates Windows 3.1.
And
I also have learned that at that time Fernald bought from us for Norton,
but
ordering it under his own name, an upgrade to BirdBase for Windows. In
fact
that was the configuration used by Norton when he measured 26 hours to
resort
the database.

Why the discrepancy between this extremely long time to perform the
resorting
operation and reports we have had from people using BirdBase for Windows
and
SoftWindows that the combination is slow but not impossibly slow?

1) The people in question must be running the newer SoftWindows 95 on
newer
Macs, which reviews in PC Magazine say leads to much faster Windows
emulations than earlier versions of SoftWindows. (Perhaps in part
because
they require more powerful Macs, which are faster.) I do know that
these
people purchased BirdBase for Windows in recent months, not two years
ago.

2) Norton has more than 60,000 sighting records in his database whereas
most
people -- and this is certainly true of new users -- have only several
thousand records in their database . The time required to resort is
proportional to the size of the database.

Mr. Norton tells me that he and his nephew will compose a clarification
and
post it on Tweeters.

I want you to understand that Santa Barbara Software Products was not
trying
to mislead you. We have been in business for 12 years, have been
producing
birding software for 10 years, and have always done everything we can to
develop a good reputation. We are much more interested in protecting
this
reputation than we are in selling BirdBase to the very few people who
own
Macs, keep birding records, and are willing to purchase the rather
expensive
SoftWindows software.

Robert Eisberg
Santa Barbara Software Products