At the end of May 2002, a member of the HATT list received a postcard ad from eHelp Corporation. Following are the posts from the HATT list:
| --On Thursday, May 30, 2002, 5:22 PM -0400 Ron Miller wrote:
I got a post card today in the mail. Interestingly enough, it is addressed to me, but it lists my neighbors company's name and my address.
|
| Maybe I misread that. 70 minutes to complete help with RoboHelp? What size project is that? Would authoring my 1,800-topic help project take only 70 minutes with RH? I can't type that fast, I wonder what kind of drugs come in that eHelp wrapper . . . contact-Speed to spray on my keyboard? Really, 70 minutes? I must be misunderstanding. How big could that help system be? Sean [Brierley]
|
| Well, I came up for air, checked HATT, and lookie what awaited me. Here we go again. Call me crazy, but to write a typical Help system (2000 topics) would take me more than 500 minutes, nevermind 70.73 minutes. When was the last time that you turned in a Help project on which you worked less than 10 hours? This is simply laughable!!! I spend that much time creating a proper index for a Help system of that size. Well, okay, I spend a day to create it, but then I QA it. GIVE ME A BREAK! [MJ Plaster]
|
| I kinda find the .73 part the strangest. That's 43.8 seconds. It's a bit strange to time a typical help project down to the tenth of a second, no? gray [Grahame Fuller]
|
| ALL OF THIS IS MY OPINION! I'd really like to know what they are doing in order to benchmark this. Even the most basic help files that I've created take longer than that? Are they using their "sample tutorials" as a benchmark? Ha! That's laughable... ALL OF THIS IS MY OPINION! eHelp, it might be useful if you provided real figures. How many topics were created, how many linked topics, how many glossary defs, how many graphics, how many index entries and TOC entries, what TYPE of help file. ALL OF THIS IS MY OPINION! How arrogant to say that using the eHelp product can save 80% of time over a "basic tool." What the heck is RoboHelp anyways? Really, a "basic tool." ALL OF THIS IS MY OPINION! Oh yes, and P.S. eHelp. Some of your automated wizards don't do squat for me. In fact, the last time I used that Smart Index thing, I had to redo my entire index. Thanks for saving me time. ...sue [Heim]
|
| WHAT are those people smoking?????? They must be doing some SERIOUS drugs to come up with that clap trap!!!! 500 minutes, huh? 500 HOURS maybe, but MINUTES!!!!! Yeah, right! Jo Byrd
|
| > <begin marketing copy> > If you are using a basic tool, Word, or and HTML editor to develop > your online help, you are wasting time. If you're coding it by hand, > you are really wasting time. Geez, if I used RH, I would become so proficient that my company would no longer need me! ;) Dana W. the "basic tool" user
|
| Well, there are a couple of things to bear in mind here. First of all, Anonymous says this study was performed by Arthur Andersen. They were studying the Help Authoring Department at Enron. The Help authors were documenting Enron's revolutionary CFEPM application (California Fair Energy Price Modeling) application. They probably did finish in 70.whatever minutes. (And no, of course Anonymous isn't Deep Throat! Really, Ron, you have to stop spreading these rumors!!!) Second of all, why are you guys always beating up on eHelp? I mean can't we count our blessings for once? I mean, this time they're not insulting Help authors, not suggesting we're irrelevant and that our lives are nothing but drudgery. They're just being DUMB DUMB DUMB. Let's see ... 70:43.8 ... does that not sound more like the winning time in an Olympic event than anything remotely connected to Help authoring? Sheesh, David Knopf
|
| Come on, folks. They're talking about their OWN help systems, right? And we know how helpful it is... m [Marsha Finley]
|
| Ok, let's take a good hard look at this ... --On Thursday, May 30, 2002 5:22 PM -0400 Ron Miller wrote: > I got a post card today in the mail. Interestingly enough, it is > addressed to me, but it lists my neighbors company's name and my address. I received an email from someone today (who shall remain nameless unless he decides to reveal himself) stating he'd received an emailed ad from eHelp. His beef was that he'd never supplied them with his email address. He's really wondering if they harvested it and, if so, from where. > The marketing spiel here claims to save up to 86% of the time it takes > create help files with what it calls a "basic tool. To "prove," this they > include a graph with average minutes it takes to complete a project and a > bar that shows it takes 70.73 minutes to complete a job with RH and 509.3 > minutes (on average) with so called basic tool. It says it based on > average development time scores in an independent study. I'd really like to see that study. To score something like this to a fraction of a second seems completely outrageous. What kind of job? Layout? Content authoring? Indexing? What? > The copy says, and I quote: > > <begin marketing copy> > If you are using a basic tool, Word, or and HTML editor to develop your > online help, you are wasting time. If you're coding it by hand, you are > really wasting time. The problem I have with this is that I do use FrontPage and then compile with FAR. To tell me I'm wasting my time ... well, that's something I only allow my boss to tell me. > RH can save you more than 80% of the time you're investing in Help > development--hours that you could be spending elsewhere [at the beach > maybe or dancing] To attach numbers to something as ambiguous as writing is so TQM. It has no place there. Are folks complaining because the 5th Harry Potter book has now slipped to summer 2003? Nope. Why's that? QUALITY. They know Ms. Rowling is only after the highest quality in her works. It's the quality that counts, not the numbers. If there's no quality, only time-saving, you may as well not have the help system anyway. > Automated Wizards simplify the technical side of creating a Help system, > making it fast and easy. No more workarounds dealing with basic tools. > [That's my favorite part.] </end marketing copy> Wizards may render certain features of a help system more easily, however, once again it's a matter of quality. Which index will be better ... one from a real indexer or one from an automated wizard? There's likely no contest. > It goes on to offer a free RH starter kit, which includes and evaluation > license for RH Office. They claim this evaluation copy along with some > white papers and sample files has a $299 value. How stuff that's > available for free has a value is beyond me, but hey, it sounds good. If these things are available from the eHelp web site, their real cost to the consumer is that time and money it takes to download these items. This in no way adds up to $299. I used to work in R&D at Toyota. Each initial prototype of the 1997 Camry cost anywhere from $250k to $500k to produce. Does this mean the price of the 1997 Camry to the consumer was the same as for the prototypes? Absolutely not. How did eHelp compute these costs? We have no clue. Once again, eHelp isn't talking hard facts about the features of their products. This time, they're apparently talking to managers whose only concern is on the budgetary level. And once again, the real qualities of their own product is lost. eHelp, you have a good product (which I've certainly stated before). It would probably be a great idea to talk about the real features of the product, not talk around it with claims which are as-of-yet unsubstantiated. Imagine if Toyota marketed their cars like this ... [... cue the man Ron to step up to the mic and let 'er rip ...] David [Liske]
|
| With regards to eHelp (that's an exclamation, not a company name, btw): 1) By suggesting that it takes 70 minutes to make an entire help system, they are downplaying the technique, skill, and . . . errrr . . . work it takes to get that job done. (We don't need a help author, our programmer can do it in an hour.) Or, they are using WebWorks Publisher Pro--my 1,800-topic c-s help takes only 15 minutes to create. Seriously. 2)Otherwise, the 70-minutes thing demonstrates utter ignorance about how their product is used and in what kinds of workflows RoboHelp plays a role. That is, they don't know anything about real-world help authoring. 3) Of course, I've not personally seen this marketing lit. However, given their track record, all of this is entirely believable. Sean Brierley
|