Although most of the people who have upgraded to eWallet 7 on Windows PCare having no trouble at all, there are a few folks running into bugs. A few of these bugs are really frustrating and we’re not taking this lightly. We’ve got developers working non-stop on these and we hope to have an update in the near future.
Most of the people who are running into trouble are already working with Kevin, Lee, and myself on getting the issues ironed out but I wanted to just take a minute to explain why you are seeing bugs! Understanding the developer end of things may not make everything better, but it might help give some insight into what is going on.
I’m also going to mention a few of the bugs we’ve seen at the end of this post. One reminder, however…please send us email if you need support. We just can’t do it here in the blog comments!
That said…read on if you want the full story!
So what is so different about eWallet 7 on Windows PC?
The underlying challenge is this…with eWallet 7 we literally rewrote every single piece of the eWallet program. The program you were all using before was over 10 years old and while the original code base was strong, it had some issues. None of that is left in eWallet 7. It’s a brand new application.
But why did you change it?
First, it was rigid, meaning it was exceptionally hard for us to do things that people felt “should be easy to implement.” We needed flexibility so we could remain relevant going forward.
Second, it saw a lot of add-ons over the years. eWallet 6 was a LOT different (feature-wise) from eWallet 1. At some point, all that adding on takes its toll and makes it really expensive (in time and money) to improve the application.
Third, the user interface needed a major face lift. I know a lot of our long term users didn’t mind it (I kind of liked it!) BUT many old customers felt we weren’t keeping up with the times (and said so!) and for new customers it made it hard for us to compete (once they TRIED the apps they chose us, but in a screenshot to screenshot comparison it was tough for us!) Just sprucing up the old version wasn’t an option (see the first and second points!)
Didn’t you test this thing?
Did we ever! We had over 100 people actively using eWallet for around two months straight. In addition, we’ve been using eWallet 7 in-house even longer than that! Plus we did all our usual automated and manual testing that we do with every release. So yes – we tested this – A LOT!
So how did bugs get through?
Remember the part about rewriting the entire application? When you do that, no matter how carefully you test, it is impossible to find all the bugs. With Windows PCs there are literally an infinite number of installation and configuration combinations. There is NO WAY to test every condition. You test as many as you can and catch as much as you can, but you’ll never catch everything. It’s a mathematical impossibility.
Even now, with people helping us work on the bugs that have come up, many of these we can’t even replicate in-house. It is exceptionally difficult BUT we’re working on it and we will work these out. Believe it or not, the last version of eWallet had its problems – we worked through them and the same will be true here. We’ll do everything we can to help you in the meantime.
In the end it’s what we had to do…
We knew we’d be facing challenges like this when we went into this. We had a 7.0.1 update release on the calendar prior to eWallet even going out. If we didn’t do this overhaul now, however, there would have been costs down the road. We had to bite the bullet and make it happen – it took a long time, a ton of work, and we’re working through some challenges now, but in the long run eWallet will be a better app for it and will be poised to serve you for the next decade.
So what is a customer to do?
First, let support know what you saw by sending them an email. LOTS of people want eWallet 7 so we are getting slammed by questions, orders, and requests but we WILL answer you. If you don’t email us, however, we won’t know what is happening.
Second, if you’ve got one of the uglybugs and you decide you want to use eWallet 6 for now, that’s fine – just say so in the email and we’ll send you what you need.
Finally – talk to us! We really do want to make things right and we’ll do everything in our power to do so – so let us know what YOU need and we’ll work with you.
Sincerely, Marc
PS: Here are some things we know folks are seeing right now –
Windows 7 Explorer Crashes: Can’t replicate this in-house but we’re working with some customers to figure out what is happening.
BSOD: Holy crap! A couple of people have seen really bad crashes – again, for the life of us we can’t replicate this but we’re working with some folks and will get this ironed out as well. The strange thing here is that we quite literally aren’t touching anything in Windows that should allow this! It’s nuts but we’ll figure it out!
Blank Text: Can’t see the text? We found that some customers using particularly high DPI settings are running into this. We have a solution we’re testing so hopefully we can get it into the next build.
Error 1010 On Sync: If something goes wonky during install (maybe from other programs running or something like that) it might damage your sync partnership. If that happens just delete the partnership from sync setup and re-add it. You should be all set!
These are a few that I wanted to mention just because they are the most likely to make you nuts if you get them! As I said – most people aren’t having any problems – seriously, we’ve got thousands of people using eWallet 7 now and only a handful see these – these bugs suck – we know – but odds are you won’t see them…and again…IF YOU DO, PLEASE EMAIL US! We can’t do support on the blog. It just isn’t setup for that!