Platonic Dialog

Ryan: Hello Giuseppe
Swan: Hello Ryan, you are always collaborative. It would be great if the people behind the other programs were as collaborative as you are. BTW: when you sold an NMR product to Menarini Ricerche?

Ryan: You are going to write a product review exclusively on the content of someone's blog without actually using the product???
Swan: What's wrong? I am not hiding the fact that I have never worked with the ACD processor. Do you want to lend me a computer with the program installed, so I can write my first-hand impressions? Do you prefer to write the review by yourself? Do you want to write a review on iNMR based on my own review? I am open to all solutions.

Ryan: What are the facts that I am hiding?
Swan: You have found them into my post. Already removed?

Ryan: So do chemists like offline processing or not?
Swan: They don't like it, yet they should. When they are forced to do it, they repeat the same operations they normally perform on the spectrometer. The few smart ones that freely choose off-line processing also tend to do the same routine operations, although with a more user-friendly software.

Ryan: They will use it to re-process their data in some cases...
Swan: Don't overlook TopSpin: it's much more famous than the ACD processor, much more... and can do a few useful things too!

Ryan: But without additional and useful features, functionalities, and benefits, organizations simply wouldn't buy our software.
Swan: They would buy it more WITHOUT the additional features if it costed 499 USD. Quite often the attractive "additional features" mean additional bureaucratic work for the researcher; I personally don't like them. I however understand that in some contexts they can be important.

Ryan: Do you want to purchase software from a company that provides no documentation?
Swan: Undocumented software is unusable; the only example I know is RMN (unusable). All other programs are well documented.

Ryan: Do you want...? The List goes on.
Swan: Unsupported software is a theft. When I mean "supported" I mean that the customer can ask for extensions, modifications, etc... It's all included. The physical meeting is not necessary. Skype is enough.

Ryan: It is another good reason to have a relationship building stage between the sales person and user.
Swan: The direct relationship between the user and the programmer is more productive.