<rant>
Wow. The amount of negativity in this thread is astounding. First, you have people pissing and moaning about not having an update in over a year, now you have people pissing and moaning about the update that is about to come out. I haven't seen a bigger bunch of self-entitled whiners outside of this board except on...other Internet boards.
Really, the amount of prognostication going on here over a pre-announcement announcement is obscene. Uniden isn't forcing anyone to do *anything*. No one is twisting your arm to apply updates to *anything*. Uniden is not obligated to do *anything* to provide fixes or updates, and everyone should thank their lucky stars that they are still willing to provide fixes and potential updates to a hardware product that is pushing three (four?) years old.
I think what this situation really highlights is people's gross mis-comprehension of how all of this radio technology works. Every deployment in every area is going to be different, even if the underlying technology is the same. To have a scanner that can even be 90% capable of handling monitoring of probably thousands of radio system implementations is an engineering feat upon itself. Uniden, with the exception of some features on some regional systems, seems to have hit pretty close to the mark on performance. That they are still providing fixes for people who have problems monitoring certain systems in certain regions says a lot about how they value this small community of users of their products (keep in mind that scanners make up a small portion of their product lineup).
Really, if you're that unhappy about what you think is a lack of support by Uniden, why don't you sell your 396 and buy a PSR500? Nobody is forcing you to continue to use a product that you consider defective, and I'm sure there are plenty of people who would be willing to take your 396 off your hands. You could then go and buy the scanner that you think is getting better support (and in the end you hit Uniden in the wallet as they do not get the profit off a new scanner sale). Also keep in mind that the PSR was released three years after the 396, and in technology, three years is an eternity when it comes to improving features and functionality.
To me, Paul's notice was pretty crystal clear regarding Uniden's intentions on fixes (patching existing software issues) and upgrades (providing new feature sets). I challenge anyone to provide an example of a company that provides more than a marginal feature enhancement to a $500 product for free. Product development takes time and money (both in man-hours and licencing fees) and it would be bad business sense to not try to at least break-even on providing enhancements. I think maybe some remedial reading comprehension refeshment is in order for some people, or maybe just going back and re-reading the announcement again.
Perhaps rather than whinging about problems, folks should offer up some *constructive* criticism and help Uniden resolve their problems by providing qualititative data about the problems they are experiencing.
</rant>
-- B