Resco File Explorer 2008 Released

[Ed Hansberry]

http://www.resco.net/company/press/.../2008-06-02.htm

"Resco, a leading provider of end-user mobile applications, announced today the availability of a new release of the best selling application - Resco Explorer 2008. Since the very first version of Resco Explorer was released it became a leader and inspiration in the field of File Explorers for mobile devices. With every upgrade, developers at Resco added new features, simplified user interface and increased speed. Resco Explorer 2008 is not an exception. The source code was rebuilt, which allowed significant changes, mainly in regards to the user interface. "

There are a number of new features, including touch scrolling as shown above. Right now, most software developers I've seen implement this make it optional, which I am thankful for. I always turn off the touch scrolling. I can't seem to get touch and 'click-n-drag' to work at the same time. This release also supports virtual folders for documents, more network settings, letterbar navigation and more. If you have purchased File Explorer in the last 12 months, this is a free upgrade. Otherwise, it is $29.95 for new users and I believe half price for previous owners. This is only for the Pocket PC/Professional platform. The Smartphone/Standard version is still at 6.15.

[Ed Hansberry]

http://www.resco.net/company/press/.../2008-06-02.htm

"Resco, a leading provider of end-user mobile applications, announced today the availability of a new release of the best selling application - Resco Explorer 2008. Since the very first version of Resco Explorer was released it became a leader and inspiration in the field of File Explorers for mobile devices. With every upgrade, developers at Resco added new features, simplified user interface and increased speed. Resco Explorer 2008 is not an exception. The source code was rebuilt, which allowed significant changes, mainly in regards to the user interface. "

There are a number of new features, including touch scrolling as shown above. Right now, most software developers I've seen implement this make it optional, which I am thankful for. I always turn off the touch scrolling. I can't seem to get touch and 'click-n-drag' to work at the same time. This release also supports virtual folders for documents, more network settings, letterbar navigation and more. If you have purchased File Explorer in the last 12 months, this is a free upgrade. Otherwise, it is $29.95 for new users and I believe half price for previous owners. This is only for the Pocket PC/Professional platform. The Smartphone/Standard version is still at 6.15.

[nosmohtac]

I know what you mean about the scrolling and multi-selection.

It took me a few tries to realize that resco chose a simple solution. If you flick to the right of center on your screen it scrolls. If you flick or drag to the left of center, it selects multiple items on the screen.

[Jason Lee]

This was a very disappointing release... This program should have stayed in beta for several more weeks if not longer..

Many of us beta testing the program pleaded with resco to not release the program in such a state but no one listened.

FTP doesn't completely work yet.. You can download but not upload anything...
There are many many UI errors and conflicts with the settings and a few weird issues with changing settings and messing other things up.

If you have the finger scrolling turned off there is on horizontal scroll bar so you are plain out of luck if you are in the "reports" view (what used to be the details view). You will never be able to get to the columns off the edge of the screen.

Many things that were accessible from menus before can now only be accessed by touching the screen. This makes it very difficult for those of us who use our phones inside something like an aluminum hard case that covers the screen.

I had about 15 bugs reported during beta 5. Only 2 were fixed before release.

This is a sad state in which to release a program. I always thought resco was better than this. They have always been slow to fix bugs and to add features but they never used to release totally unfinished software. Just look what happened with backup 1.0.. eesh.

All i can say is that i hope these bug fixes happen as fast as they were cranking betas out. If so the program should actually be usable in a few weeks.

[buzzard]

I was surprised to see this formally launched beta available on May 27th being completed and available for sale in about a week. It's most obvious beta flaw was you couldn't delete anything. This was quickly fixed but I wouldn't expect such a major problem to exist in a publically released beta. These rather obvious problems should be discovered in the private beta.

This has to rank as one of the shortest beta's in history while on the other hand Opera and Netfront seem to not know when a beta should end. Strange.

I wonder if this hurried Resco release was related to contractual obligations similar to the Pocket Informant 2008 release in January that had many early problems that have since been sorted out.

[Ed Hansberry]

Originally Posted by buzzard

I was surprised to see this formally launched beta available on May 27th being completed and available for sale in about a week. It's most obvious beta flaw was you couldn't delete anything. This was quickly fixed but I wouldn't expect such a major problem to exist in a publically released beta. These rather obvious problems should be discovered in the private beta.

This has to rank as one of the shortest beta's in history while on the other hand Opera and Netfront seem to not know when a beta should end. Strange.

I wonder if this hurried Resco release was related to contractual obligations similar to the Pocket Informant 2008 release in January that had many early problems that have since been sorted out.

I've not been unhappy with 2008, but not really worth the upgrade IMHO. I would have been a bit upset had I paid for it, but it was free given my last payment to them was 6 months ago.

As for long betas, anyone beat Gmail yet? That has been in beta since launch.

[schmenge]

Originally Posted by buzzard

I was surprised to see this formally launched beta available on May 27th being completed and available for sale in about a week. It's most obvious beta flaw was you couldn't delete anything. This was quickly fixed but I wouldn't expect such a major problem to exist in a publically released beta. These rather obvious problems should be discovered in the private beta.

This has to rank as one of the shortest beta's in history while on the other hand Opera and Netfront seem to not know when a beta should end. Strange.

I wonder if this hurried Resco release was related to contractual obligations similar to the Pocket Informant 2008 release in January that had many early problems that have since been sorted out.

I too wonder what the sense of urgency was; it is not like this is a new product to market for them. I was running the "pre-betas" before the official beta and those did not have the delete issue, at least for me, so I assume they just missed something easy when they had their first build.

[rkistler]

Interesting discussion for those of us considering an upgrade.

Have enjoyed having Resco Explorer on my Axim, but guess will not Rush into the upgrade.

Of course, starting to worry that the X30 may be getting close to the end of life's span, and should probably stop paying for incremental product updates, especially since most of the New Features are aimed at the newer versions of WM.....

rk / se mi

Axim X30Mid, WM2003SE

[joker]

Originally Posted by Jason Lee

This was a very disappointing release... This program should have stayed in beta for several more weeks if not longer.. Many of us beta testing the program pleaded with resco to not release the program in such a state but no one listened...

Unfortunately that's very typical for resco. Their forum is full with complaints.
Many people and their requests/reports are even ignored completely.
Just sad. And btw, opera isn't any better, same asocial behaviour.

[Jason Lee]

For your information:

Dear users,
First of all we would like to ensure you that we have no intention to delete this or any other threads just because it criticizes the mistakes we made. Critique is the best feedback from you. Based upon this feedback we can avoid repeating the same wrong steps in the future.
We have to honestly admit that Resco Explorer 2008 was not released in the shape we pictured it to be. Unfortunately some unexpected complications during the last stage of the development process caused a delay in the original plan. At that time the release date was already set. Once the release date is set, we must, due to external agreements, release the application on that day. Our internal testing indicated that most bugs reported by beta testers were fixed. We did not expect so many bugs to occur in the full version.

We do realize this could have tarnished Resco as the company you known for developing high quality software. We would like to ensure you that as you read this post, developers at Resco are working on fixing all the known problems. As a small compensation we decided to extend the free upgrade policy from 12 months to 18 months. This applies to anyone who purchased Resco Explorer 2008 before June 16^th 2008.

Sincerely,

Maros Sokol
Marketing Manager, Windows Mobile Division
www.resco.net

[joker]

Quite decent reaction from resco.

AFYI: opera does delete support forum threads.