Wow .. took me a few hours to read all these post here. I read this forum when i can, but decided to sign up when i saw this thread.
We are a lifeware dealer in Orlando, FL and working with them over the past year has been great, and Steve has been an great help to us. I will admit a year ago it was very hard for us to get lifeware some traction with builders who have been our target audience. But since IBs 2006 and now IBS 2007, builders are seeing the value of offering this to their clients and we feel this will bring HA mainstream in Central Florida. One of the main reasons for this is a couple major production home builders want this now in their model homes, taking advantage of their new builder program. Also a nationwide modular home company is seriously considering this technology for their homes. Since EI has dealers acress the US we feel this is a good fit.
We also were the Citrix Reseller who got EI insterested in GoToAssist product from Citrix. This remote support solution is huge as it allows highy secure but easy access to a client's system regardless of firewall and OS settings (the client has to agree to allow the connection) . So we have full confidence that EI can support any national builder, CI, and end user.
We hope to have a 2 demos up and running in Orlando by March 15th this year. The first is a demo home in Winter Springs and the second will be a kiosk in and office setting by the Mall of Millenia. If anyone is in the central florida area, please let me know if you want a demo too.
I know there are many choices for HA control and their will always be a place for Crestron/AMX/Ect systems in addition to lifeware. But we prefer to lead in with lifeware because of its open architecture, easy of use for all members of the family, the stablility and reliability of the system, support for a lot of different platforms and the relative low cost of the system. (We see one 50" plasma can be more expensive than the actual lifeware software cost).
