[CQ-Contest] CT vs. N1MM

[Pete Smith]

Pardon the soapbox...

What many people overlook is that the N1MM Logger project is taking a qualitatively different approach to software development, in the effort to rapidly evolve the software to meet the incredibly varied set of needs asserted by users.  Where most software's revision cycle is measured in months, MM's is measured in days or sometimes hours.  That means, in essence, that the software is in perpetual public beta test, and the trade-off for the price (hi) is that users are asked to help by testing and reporting ASAP.  As a yardstick, there have been 8 releases in October (so far).  See www.n1mm.com for details - look under the Download pull-down menu for Download Latest Upgrade, to find a complete revision history.


That being said, N1MM is a "real contester", and is very aware that during contest season he needs to be particularly conservative in making changes that could affect program functions in the major contests.  Over the years, he has gotten better and better at making that judgment.  I track bug reports and feature requests for the software, so I'm intimately aware how few really important ones come up, and how fast Tom responds.   

73, Pete N4ZR

At 01:29 PM 10/19/2006, Bill Turner wrote:
>ORIGINAL MESSAGE:
>
>On Wed, 18 Oct 2006 23:40:10 -0400, Peter Dougherty
> <w2irt at comcast.net> wrote:
>
>>N1MM is probably the best piece of contesting software you'll ever 
>>use. Not only is it immensely powerful, but support is first-rate, 
>>it's completely free to use, it can network for multi-multi in a 
>>breeze, supports distributed databases (in case one machine crashes 
>>you won't lose the log), it has amazing documentation and it boasts a 
>>featureset to die for. It also has built-in voice and CW keying, and 
>>most importantly, you can get it up and running and start using it 
>>with a very shallow learning curve.
>
>------------ REPLY FOLLOWS ------------
>
>I agree with nearly everything Peter says, but he doesn't mention one
>thing I have noticed over the years: N1MM is prone to bugs. Many times
>I have seen a new release cause something to not work which was
>working right in previous releases. Many new releases are done to fix
>something broken by a previous release. I'm not a programmer and I
>don't know why this is so, but it is.
>
>I also use WriteLog and find it is far more stable. I should point out
>that almost 100% of my contesting is on RTTY and the above may not be
>the case for CW or SSB. 
>
>Twice in the last year I have gotten so frustrated with N1MM that I
>changed back to WriteLog right in the middle of a contest. Think about
>that one! WriteLog has always done the job with no bugs I know of.
>
>Bottom line: I prefer N1MM for its features, but I keep WriteLog handy
>just in case. 
>
>Bill, W6WRT
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