On Jan 5, 2009, at 5:55:25 PM, tlbepson wrote:
1. Using version 3.0.7, it takes 25-30 seconds for the profile to be established when my system has completed booting (a pop-up window displays with the message)--not my experience with verison 3.0.4. I filed a support ticket receiving an answer rather quickly that "a delay has been instituted in the loading of the profile to ensure that the Spyder3 profile will be loaded after other, possibly conflicting, startup items have futzed with the video card."
___
There seems to be an assumption, whenever we put up a notification on startup, that the entire system screeches to a halt, and nothing else is happening while the notice is showing. Most such messages simply sit there, while stuff that would be happening anyways goes on happening. We removed our previous startup notifications, simply because Windows users seemed obsessed with finding a way to remove them, somehow thinking that they were slowing things down, when the few milliseconds they involved were actually not an issue, and the info they provides was useful. I'm glad you aren't having LUT-wars on your XP system, but others, especially under Vista, have been having a range of issues, and while most of these issues are the OS's fault, we are doing out best to address them, so that users can achieve, and maintain, managed color.
Ok...I can understand the concept but 25-30 seconds worth of delay?!!!
___
My understanding is that it is simply waiting until later in the startup process, not holding the system hostage. How often do you find it necessary to restart? I don't do it more than every month or two, but that might indicate that I'm not on Windows...
2. In the Spyder Utility preferences for Video Card, it appears that if I choose "Never" for "Load video card lookup table (LUT) every..." that the profile is never loaded.
___
Its not the profiles, but the LUTs that load. However much of the color correction is in the LUTs, so you need to load them...
Is that the correct interpretation on my part?
---
See above...
If so, perhaps in the next version of the Spyder Utility software, this could be reworked adding an option "load LUT on boot" /"Load Profile on boot" along with the option(s) to check the LUT table periodically--personally, I've never had a profile unload itself and have had no need to periodically check the LUT table so requiring me to add this periodic check to my system overhead just to get the profile loaded on boot is annoying.
___
We moved from a one time startup item to a full time utility, because there are several things we need to do at times other than startup. Overhead is minimal...
3. The load delay and the (probably minimal system overhead) is annoying enough that I'm considering uninstalling version 3.0.7 and reinstalling version 3.0.4.
___
I would recommend against this, there are fixes in 3.0.7 worth having, and the "overhead" won't be significantly different in 3.0.4...
If I do this, I think that I should do it in the following way:
---
Not interested in covering methods of downgrading our software on this forum... if you really need help with this, contact support...
1. It would be nice if there were documentation on the tabs and options in the Spyder Utility.
___
Last month's newsletter discussed these, though probably not the details you would want. We have not updated the integrated Help files (in ten languages, on multiple platforms) for each dot.dot upgrade, so we have not covered the latest changes to the utility there.
2. It would also be nice if a note were to be added in the documentation for options that are only available for the SpyderElite (for example: "only available for the SpyderElite" or "not available for the SpyderPro"). To be perfectly frank, none the Spyder3 documentation is helpful or informative--basically it's pretty lousy.
___
We do get the "lousy documentation" comment every so often, but since we get the "great documentation" comment much, much more often, we take it in perspective. Its usually engineers and programmers who are not happy with it, and end users and reviewers who like it. Not sure the same documentation could ever satisfy both groups. Either way, we hope to do more work on ease of use, and easy to understand documentation later this year. That might not move things in the direction you are looking for, however...
3. The url referenced in all of the documentation ( www.datacolor.com/Spyder3 ) does not exist
___
I copied this URL directly from your email to a browser window, and it took me to the Datacolor site's Spyder3 section. That would qualify as "existing" to end users, even if its a referred location, not a literal one.
4. The videos on the datacolor.com site are not captioned for those of us with a hearing loss so the videos are not accessible
Nor are they available in all ten languages, or in high contrast for the visually impaired, etc. We have been working on the theory that quick and dirty videos (YouTube quality, so to speak) that meet the needs of many of our English language users are worthwhile. If we waited for the time and budget to make them all things for all people, they wouldn't be there at all.
--
C. David TobieWW Product Technology Manager
Digital Imaging & Home Theater
Datacolor
CDTobie@...
www.datacolor.com/spyder3