I am a new user who has used JV16 extensively during the trial period. My first impressions were that the product is excellent and I happily went about testing and using many of the different parts of the program. During this time I have also been doing some extensive cleanup and testing of other products both in the same category as JV16 and antivirus, spyware, and firewall products.
I would consider myself to be an intermediate user and while most of my friends and relatives think I'm an "expert" I realize that is far from the case. During the process of testing and using the product, I came across both this "bug" and another one which you have not yet addressed with very similar symptoms in the uninstall section of the program (see my other thread). Because of the similarity of symptoms (registry issues in the same general area), I suspect both "bugs" have the same root cause. Both "bugs" did not show up right away after the errors occurred and it was only after many hours of work spread over days that I managed to track it down to JV16. If I had not been so intensely involved in researching the possible causes and going through a learning curve of many hours, I would not have been able to determine what the cause was at all .... backup or no backup.
Here we have 2 of the main components of a wonderful program with bugs that in spite of what you say, from the user level are very serious indeed (can cause loss of functionality). You also don't seem to realize that it was only my willingness to go through hours of research and because my level of knowledge of registry issues is above average that I am even here in the first place. Most users would never know what caused these errors since they may not discover their symptoms until well after they occurred and even then would not have the knowledge to relate the errors to JV16. I would think it is reasonable to assume that far less than 10% of users who encounter these issues will even know where they came from much less report them or "fix" them.
I am also left with residual issues from the process of testing this and other programs which while not serious, are certainly curious. I have no idea and will probably never know what their root cause is. I had every intention of buying JV16 2009 but that is certainly not the case any longer. I am left with "less than full trust" in the use of the product and while I can back up anything I do, issues may not show up for weeks. I also did not receive any notification of possible issues from Macecraft which would have saved me a great deal of time in solving my problem. My email is working fine. Programs like this that are very powerful and have great potential to cause harm must also take on a higher than normal level of responsibility to their customers and not try to minimize what is clearly not a minor issue.
As has already been pointed out as well ... this is not an "old" or legacy product ... it is the latest update to your current product. Even Microsoft is still providing fixes to a product 2 generations back (XP).
I am left with truly being impressed and even excited with the concept of the program and your own abilities and skills to produce products, but not so much with it's implementation. I now have trust issues stemming from both the "bugs" themselves but even more so from your responses in this thread. I am a little perplexed and surprised that you are trying to categorize this as "minor" and from my perspective evading your responsibility to at least email every one of your clients to inform them of this. I think too that you are underestimating the number of people who could be affected.
In effect I am being "forced" to wait till the 2010 version is out and has been stable for long enough to create trust that there are no issues waiting to be discovered there as well.
Absolutely great product ..... backed up by not so great concern or insight into the nature of their customers. It sems to me a classic case of an amazing developer getting caught up in the narrow world of program development at the cost of "real world" awareness of their customers' needs and abilities.
I don't believe I am alone.
Sybrandus
