Scanstar/Spectrum Commander/Signal Intelligence Out Of Business?

[mikea7531]

.... However, it’s clear that just an annotation won’t be sufficient in this case. There’s no reason to add a note to the entry, it should just be removed. In fact, all links to the Signal Intelligence web site, outside of the discussion forums, should be removed until such time that this vendor decides to advertise his products truthfully and confirms he’s actually supporting customers who purchase them. At least that’s what I would have done if a subscriber made the complaint that I did.....

I have no idea why you are having the problems you are having. I've had ScanStar's Spectrum Commander for over two years now, and the support from Sam has been great. Anytime i've put a support request in, he's been very responsive and nice. His software fixes ususally take less than a week. The support from this company has been far better than Butel, which they like to point the problem on your end for weeks, and then come out with a fix about 3 months later. Look at the choppy audio problem, He kept blaming us, now he finally puts out a fix. Sam's support is much better.

 

[bagmouse7]

I am a very happy user of ScanStar's Spectrum Commander. I use to to control a mix of Icom, AOR, and Optocom/OS535 radios. It works great for all of them.
Sam's support has been very good and regular releases are still coming out quite often for Spectrum Commandar.
I have submitted 2 problems with the program over the last 3 years, and both were fixed within a month.

 

[loumaag]

That’s funny, the webmaster had no problem responding to my email, and taking my money after I pointed out that the registration module wasn’t working, got an answer then. Now that the registration module is working fine, he just ignores emails about web site issues.

The inclusion of or notations to links on the RR Wiki is not a "web site" issue. The registration module is a Web Site issue as would be a problem in access to the DB or the forums or something not working in the Wiki. What is apparent is that you have an axe to grind and are using this thread to do so.

However, it’s clear that just an annotation won’t be sufficient in this case. There’s no reason to add a note to the entry, it should just be removed. In fact, all links to the Signal Intelligence web site, outside of the discussion forums, should be removed until such time that this vendor decides to advertise his products truthfully and confirms he’s actually supporting customers who purchase them. At least that’s what I would have done if a subscriber made the complaint that I did.

Well, that is an opinion (reference annotation/removal), since it is apparent that you are the most vocal of the detractors of this vendor, why don't you take him on personally. Frankly I have no idea who he is or what his software does. I do know that the entry you seem to have so much trouble with has been on the RR Wiki, virtually unchanged, since Feb of 2005.

In this message thread we’ve seen more effort to justify why this vendor might ignore customers, rather than address the more topical issue of whether radiofererence.com should help promote his products. I’m a premium subscriber, and entitled at least to a courtesy of a reply. Looks like that’s not going to happen. This is a web site admin issue, not just electronic graffiti beyond your control.

Again, this is not a Web Site issue and as for promoting software, that entry no more promotes software than your ability to post promotes you.

How much is Signal Intelligence paying radioreference.com to keep links active to their web site? Is it as much as premium subscribers are paying? If I pay radioreference.com enough, would I be allowed to scam subscribers, too? I think that’s a sleazy mode of operation.

This is an insulting comment and with that I am going to recommend that Mike remove any ability you have to make changes to the Wiki as obviously you have issues. Mike I am going to PM you this character's IP addresses. I am also going to bring to the rest of the moderators' attention (which of course will include the webmaster) you and your attitude in this thread.

 

[blantonl]

Thanks Lou for pointing this out.

How much is Signal Intelligence paying radioreference.com to keep links active to their web site? Is it as much as premium subscribers are paying? If I pay radioreference.com enough, would I be allowed to scam subscribers, too? I think that’s a sleazy mode of operation.

When people post garbage like this crap in the forums, it pains me to think what is really bothering them.

We have absolutely no relationship whatsoever with Signals Intelligence.

Bigtowers, the wiki is a REFERENCE source, not a buyers guide. Just because someone doesn't like Uniden Scanners doesn't mean we remove all links to Uniden products.

You need to take a breather, be realistic, and stop imposing some asinine approach on the rest of the community. If you have a problem with someone's software - great, discuss it here, but quit being an ass about it... and frankly there littletowers, that is where you crossed the line.

 

[gg750]

I stumbled across this and wanted to give my 2 cents...

I've been a user of Trunkstar Elite for close to a year now. Before that it was Trunkstar XLT. I've found both to be outstanding tools for both programming and recording audio from my Uniden scanners. To the OP, the reason you were having "problems" using this software with your Pro96 is because many of the features this software is designed to do aren't compatible with that (or any other) RS scanner. However, for those with Uniden scanners looking for a great programming and audio capture software package, I highly recommend looking into a S.I. program.

Thanks,

G

 

[windigofer]

In regards to different scanner programs--well, depending on manufacturer, you're going to have different options.

Butel and ScanStar have been options for the Uniden crowd (along with a number of other options); until fairly recently, pretty much *the* option for GRE kit was Starrsoft's WinXX programs (the Pro-92, whose transfer format was reverse-engineered, had considerably more options including open source offerings; the situation with the PSR-500 is starting to look very similar, especially as GRE is willing to work with developers in providing specs (and they should be commended for this!), and no less than three commercial development packages have already been announced and are in various stages of development).

I have always gotten the impression with ScanStar that they essentially "shoehorned" the GRE Radio Shack kit in as an afterthought--the program is designed for Uniden scanners primarily, and as an afterthought tries to be a general "swiss army knife" programming tool for a number of other manufacturers. There are, alas, compromises to be had in this.

It *would* have actually been interesting to see if Signal Intelligence would have done anything with the new GRE kit coming out (as (among other things) there are nifty features like live trunking info dump/monitoring through the PC/IF interface, the ability to use the PC as a remote control headend, etc. that are more similar to Uniden offerings); still, though, I have a feeling that the needs of GRE scanner owners are better met with programs designed to work with what the GRE scanners do well (and so far, Don Starr has been best of breed on that, though Mike Vander Veer's offerings in this regard are giving Don some real competition ).

A good parallel on this is with PCs and Macs (and their respective operating systems). Yes, you *can* in theory use an Intel-based Mac to run Windows (for the stuff that MacOS X doesn't have ported to it yet). You can even (with tools like Parallels, etc.) run Windows apps under MacOS X itself. It still feels kludgy as all get out, though, and generally if given a choice MacOS X users will choose a Mac-native tool to do what they need to do (especially if the tool relies on Windows-specific stuff that won't work under MacOS X) because it *works better for Macs*.

You can run MacOS X on PCs with a whole lot of hackery, too. You can't run MacOS X apps, admittedly, unless you DO put MacOS X on--but it's still clunky. MacOS X was never really designed for PCs in the first place.

(And then there's Linux, but that's another ball of wax not relevant to the analogy I don't know of any scanner programs that attempt to fit a "Linux" role of being able to do a few things well across scanner manufacturers. Maybe Butel )

Anyways, software programs for different scanner manufacturers are much like that. Unless they are designed "Linux style"--that is, from the get-go to do a few things well across multiple scanner families--it's always going to feel kludgy using scanner tools that cover GRE kit but which were designed with Uniden users in mind

(And yes, this is coming from someone who uses GRE kit, which in its own way is kind of the "MacOS of the scanner world" And who is hoping someday to get some native tools out for MacOS X and Linux for working with our little "different" scanners )