Quick update on release dates. The basic software now works almost well enough to release - the dictionary interface works, handwriting/radical input palettes work, most of the preferences options work, and the registration system works, so aside from a few annoying bugs it's pretty much ready for public consumption.
However, there's still a week or two of additional work needed to get the flashcard and custom dictionary entry features working well enough to include them even in beta form, so the thinking now is that we'll push ahead with those with the hope of having them ready in time for our September 1st deadline. If September 1st starts creeping up and they're still not ready, we'll disable them in order to make sure we have something available on time, but we have a pretty good shot at getting them in so we think it's worth the try.
To those of you who might ask why we don't just release what we have and then follow up with the flashcards later, there are two main reasons for that. For one thing, the documentation and website work isn't done yet, so if we wanted to start taking orders tomorrow we'd have to process them manually (no fun) and deal with an even larger volume of installation-related tech support e-mail than we normally get.
But more important is the fact that every time we release an interim version of anything, it costs us about a week of development time, due to the packaging and testing required before release and the inevitable flood of e-mail that comes after. And with all the anticipation around this Pocket PC release (not to mention the fact that it's a brand new platform and we don't know what sorts of tech support questions we're likely to get) it could end up costing us as much as two weeks to release an interim version of that. So really it's in our best interest to release this as close as possible to September 1st, and hopefully the version we release then will be sufficiently stable and complete so as to require only one or two more releases before the official, finished 1.0 version. (certainly a lot less than the 5 releases and 7 months between the first release and the finished version on Palm)
So for those of you who are eagerly awaiting the Pocket PC release, there's really no need to keep checking our website every day, because it's very unlikely we'd release something before the last week of August. And I apologize if my earlier comments may have suggested otherwise - there was a period when I thought a feature-lacking Preview Release in the vein of the early Palm versions might be a good way to build interest, but now I'm pretty well convinced that it's best to put out as few beta versions as possible.
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