Personal attacks? Let's show them what a personal attack is.

Joshod,

You were such a moron that throughout your posts you were at war with yourself, firing out statements which were not just inconsistent, but which were utterly devoid of any coherence or logic, to the point where your adversary in debate stopped being us and became yourself.

Even if you had ten tongues, you ought to hold them all.

Now do us a favor and get that twaddle talking tongue of yours surgically removed from your mouth.

NOW you've been personally attacked :-) :-) :-).

I'm bummed. I didn't get one of the special e-mails. I'll try harder next time.

Want mine?

To all EI personal,
I visited your booth at EHX expo I liked the fact that you are all very passionate about your product and are willing to stand behind it.
However none of you could come up with a real numbers for the cost of your system all you said was AMX this and Crestron that.
A word of advice, stop comparing yourself to AMX or Crestron or anybody else, start consternating on who you are and what you can do.
The animosity you are getting here is not personal it’s just a good group of professionals who have been bombarded by propaganda from a bunch of new manufactures, without any track record making claims that they have nothing to show for. AMX (which we support) as been used by the US military, and other US agencies, that is track record.
The same processor that is been used in the white house is also used in a 1500SQF condo (yes that is the range in which AMX is operating).
EI, I am glad you found yourselves a partner with best buy and that you successful doing that, raising awareness for home automation is good for all of us.
But do yourselves a favor and pick on Control 4, if you must, you are not AMX or Crestron!!!!

I think that it's unfortunate that a company like EI spends hundreds of thousands of dollars on magazine spreads, trade show booths, etc. with the purpose of attracting new dealers, and now has to go into damage control as the result of this thread.

Remote Central could have been a great (and free) tool for attracting new business. Instead, this thread, and EI's untimely departure has most likely served to alienate some prospective dealers. For every active participant, there's probably 4-5 others who read these forums but don't participate. What is the overall impression that EI has made as a result of this thread?

Has anyone been won over by them?

Has anyone, who was considering partnering with them been turned-off by their answers or collective behaviors?

If there's a moral to this story then what is it?

Don't let your employees represent your company on public forums?

Don't make claims about competitive products unless you're prepared to substantiate those claims?

Stay away from Internet forums unless you have really thick skin?

I'm not sure I agree with you on this. I've been thinking about this for a while.

Vendors that post publicly here run the risk of having their laundry aired in public. Any cranky CI who had trouble with their product (rightly or wrongly, bad product or bad installation), any CI that didn't get a friendly or timely return call from a rep, or anybody who disagrees with the vendor's marketing policy, who they do or do not distribute to, who they do or do not sell, can beat them up in public here. It has happened countless times in the past five years I've been watching.

So, the vendor gets beat up, and they face the RC Catch 22. Respond, and they get dragged into a public debate with (often) anonymous CI's with triple letter pseudonyms. They can respond reasonably, and get hammered in turn by impolite or just-plain-wrong posters. What is the up side to this?

Or, if they don't respond, they are called out on it, asked why they're silent on the matter; "What's the matter, did I catch you in a lie?"

Frankly, if I were a vendor, I would watch this forum and leave strict instructions to my people; stay out, or face a firing squad.


Amen, Ahem. I would add to that, stay away from Internet forums altogether, so you can control the dialog with your dealers and dealer prospects.

But don't start things out with a lot of misinformation in regards to whom you believe is your competitor. Or acknowledge that you were wrong and correct yourself.

The post with so called Crestron information was way off base, fix it. Stand up about it and move on...

I don't think EI should have left, but it is their decision, not mine. Any person that posts with a corporate identity has the dissadvantage of being involved in any particular conversation as an individual or as a company depending on whether the forum members want to or not, at their whim. There are many other manufacturers who have members who post on such forums as Remote Central. I generally notice that they post once or twice to address specific questions. They generally post comparative statements with respect to their own hardware, but when dealing with competitors, just say things like "you will be happy" or "this will work for you" rather than addressing specific perceived deficiencies or feature sets. The manufacturer also seems to make a few posts at the beginning of a thread, but usually stays out of the feeding frenzies that can continue afterwards.

jshod and emma are bueing shut down from their corporate management. so as individuals, we can't rightfully speculate anything about the employees or their willingness to participate as individuals.

i don't think anyone should use this thread specifically as the determining factor of whether they are going to investigate lifeware or not... or at least not the fact that lifeware pulled out, but perhaps the technical content of the thread. i don't think that lifeware fits my biz or my partners, but i'm willing to investigate it to confirm with a sound technical backing that this is true.

The problem is that there is very little actual technical discussion from EI. There were a few tidbits, but by-and-large, the majority of EI's technical claims refer to AMX/Crestron. Throughout the thread, they make claims like "we can do 95% of what AMX/Crestron can do". When asked to provide an equipment list for a simple system, they said "no comment"(not saying that my system is what made them leave, but I never did get a complete answer other than "let's take this off-line and have some kool-aid together"). If they are going to make claims like 95%, then they better be able to deliver 95%. More importantly, I want to know what 5% they can't do so I can ensure that 5% is not something that is crucial to my business.

Personally, I feel like they left for two reasons.

One was Other's exceptional post. If I was in management at EI, I would have that sucker printed, handed out to all the staff, and then discussed in depth at the next meeting.

Two was my system. I honestly do not think they can do that system. I understand that EI is based around MCE so it wasn't designed to control DVD players/tuners etc, but rather to have them built into the MCE machine. However, if this is the case, does this mean that I am not supposed to sell anymore DVD players/tuners/CD players/etc? Should I trade several decent margin, simple items for a low-margin integrated machine? This approach does not fit my business plan. I want to be able to sell seperate units where each unit fits the needs of the client. I want to have the ability to remove them if they need servicing without taking the whole system down. I want to be able to upgrade them when needed. As part of this, I want to be able to sell a system built with MCE as a source that can be used throughout the house, but I do not want it to run the house and be the ONLY source. An automation system needs to be built around being able to control devices, not replace them.


I think Josh's feelings were just an excuse to leave the discussion. I did get an e-mail from Emma about contacting them to get a system design(I think she thought that I was a customer). I would reply and ask them off-line to do the system, but at the bottom of the e-mail is a legal disclaimer about sharing the contents of that e-mail. If I get some info like pricing/specs, I am sure they will come with the same legal warning that I am not supposed to talk about them. Look at how secretive they have been about pricing so far. Come on guys, it's called MSRP for a reason. Open up, talk facts, and only talk about what YOU can and cannot do.

Now wait a minute Owen :-)! That's cute, but with the exception of some jabs from time to time at Control4, and a frank discussion of PHAST along with every other person who ever sold it, I can't recall many times I've ever taken off on a manufacturer. I don't believe I've EVER aired my dirty laundry here.

I think you are ignoring one major fact. THEIR behavior, i.e. THEIR CLAIMS about themselves and the competition. As I just pointed out over at AVS, why is it that some individuals manage to participate on forums regularly and are held in high esteem by almost everyone. Buzz Goddard from NeStreams, Paul from Triad, Brent from Etherial, Mark Seaton from Seaton Sound to name a few.

The reason is that these are stand-up guys who conduct themselves with decorum, don't shill for their product in every thread, and don't make constant exaggerations and false claims about their own products while making misstatements about the competition. They also have some marketing sense. They understand the market and understand how to present themselves.

Don't forget our friend Mr. Roddy. Who, while selling a similar product, has somehow managed to conduct himself in a positive way for several years here. I'm sure that there's been times when his products have been criticized too.

The way that I see it, if you have a $100,000 advertising budget, and each year, your advertising nets you 100 new customers, then you've effectively paid $1000.00 for each customer.

Ergo, should you happen to tick off and lose a potential customer then you've just cost yourself $1000 in advertising expense alone to replace him or her.

Anyone care to guess when Daniel's going to receive a request to remove this forum? The only reason I think this is because EI is so secretive, has everyone sign an NDA and even puts disclosure statements in their email, it would seem a large part of their business plan requires lawyers.

They spend many many thousands on marketing and are now having to spend so much more on damage control.

I have not forgotten about Mr. Roddey, in fact he is a case study in a person who over time learned more and more to present his product AND to understand the market as well as custom installers.

I remember some early threads where he got a LOT of heat. Often he would talk about Crestron being overpriced and how his software product was the way of the future. Even though I am sure he still believes those things he started to instead focus on merely presenting his product. And to his credit he has always been exceptionally truthful about his own product. As a result he earned everyones respect.

They could learn a lot from him because a lot of the heat EI took in this thread was because they kept making misstatements about their competitors products and giving what many thought were not always straightforward answers about their own. It's also NOT necessary to try to poo poo very real limitations of your product, often it's better to acknowledge them. That's another problem as I saw it in this thread.

Golly! I'm outa here too!

Stanley, EI could learn a lot from you..........