Whizlabs require Beta Testers for SCMAD

[Pradeep Chopra]

Dear Ranchers,
As you know that we have released the Trial version of SCMAD Exam Simulator, I am happy to share that we will soon be releasing the Full version of SCMAD Certification Exam Simulator.
In order to ensure our past success rate (over 99.7% in the last 3 years), we are seeking Beta testers for the same. We would welcome people in different stages of their preparation (early preparation stage, middle of preparation, about to appear for the exam).
In case you are planning to take up the above exam in May-July 2004, and would be interested in reviewing our product, mail us at [email protected] (mention your stage of preparation) by May 25, 2004.
The short listed Beta Testers will be entitled for a FREE Exam Simulator License.
Happy Learning!
Gunjan Gupta
Executive, HR
--------------------
Whizlabs Software
Success, certified!
Global leader: J2EE certification exam preparation!
http://www.whizlabs.com
An ISO 9001-2000 certified company!
[ May 12, 2004: Message edited by: Whizlabs Software ]

[Keristufer Blaze]

I purchased several exams from you guys. After installing them, I had to format my computer and reinstall the operating system. I tried reinstalling the whizlabs exams I purchased but the license numbers wouldn't work anymore. So I emailed you SEVERAL times and didn't get any replies for this issue even though I had received replies in the past for other issues. As of now I consider your service to be VERY bad. I'm disapointed, feel ripped off, and don't plan to purchase any exams from you again.

[Victor pudkowski]

Mr Whizlab
Should you be beta testing *before* putting the product on the market?

[Nicholas Cheung]

Should you be beta testing *before* putting the product on the market?

So, now, Mr. Whizlabs is asking for beta testers to test their SCMAD product.

However, I really wonder whether there are really selected beta testers for their products from here.

So far, among so many beta testers promotions, I havent seen anyone from here, who told us that they have been one of the testers. Instead, I saw many posts that asked why there was no news at all after applied for the beta testers.

I think, at least, Mr Whizlabs should let people know they have not been elected, or announced that the beta testers selection process has been finished.

Nick

[Pradeep Chopra]

Hi Keristufer:

I apologize for the dissatisfaction you had out of our service in the past. Honestly speaking, we faced breakdown in our CRM (Customer Relationship Management) due to two reasons:
a.) Server/System Crash
b.) One member leaving us

Fortunately, we've now revamped the team and are once again in a position to serve in the way our customers expect from us. In case you presently need any support/service, please mail us at [email protected] (or mail me personally at [email protected]).

Hi Victor/Nick:
We are in the need of people (at different stages of preparation) to test/review our products at different stages: Pre-release and After-release. Thus, the term used is little confusing. I promise that we'll put the names of people we've choosen to avoid any confusion.

I hope I've addressed your concerns. Please write to me if I can be of any further assistance.

Thanks for your valuable inputs!

Best wishes,
Pradeep

[Mehdi Chaouachi]

Originally posted by Pradeep Chopra:
Hi Keristufer:

I apologize for the dissatisfaction you had out of our service in the past. Honestly speaking, we faced breakdown in our CRM (Customer Relationship Management) due to two reasons:
a.) Server/System Crash
b.) One member leaving us

Does this mean that when a person leaves you, your whole support system goes down !!!

If I was a competitor, I would hire three of your employees, and kaboum, you will close!!! cool

Justkidding....

[Pradeep Chopra]

Hi Mehdi,

NO. The support system couldn't be totally dependent on one person. Had this be the case, we wouldn't be existing in the market for over 3 years now. Along with Server crash, it only caused some temporary problems/delays.

Best wishes,
Pradeep

[Sean Mac Giolla Uidhir]

I have also had terrible experiences with Whizlabs software. The implementation is dreadful, and the support is just as bad. It is protected by an extremely unfair licensing system which punishes you if the installation goes badly (which it will!) even once.

I got the impressions that Whizlabs is a one man show, given the non-existence of support and the hacky (VB?) implementation, which I could not for the life of me get to work on any XP system.

*Never* again.

[Sivasundaram Umapathy]

Uidhir,

I don't find any problem with whizlabs on windows XP. Infact I have installed on both Windows XP professional(English),Windows XP Home(Italian), Windows NT workstation(Italian) and everything is perfectly fine.

What was the error you encountered during the installation?

Siva

[bparanj]

Hello,

I am the author of the Object-Oriented Analysis and Design exam simulator sold by Whizlabs at a exorbitant price.

I agree with those who have had bad experience with Whizlabs. Quality of Whizlab software is very poor. The technical support is also bad. It is run by a couple of guys after work. Their behavior is like that of high school students when dealing with the authors.

Free Beta testers??? Excuse me. I don't need any free product which has no quality.

I am not joking. It is really true, if you hire their authors and pay them a reasonable royalty then Whizlabs will be history.

Here is my proposal to those members here. I know that there are very knowledgable members here on this forum. If you are interested in independent publishing please let me know.

There is an alternative to Whizlabs. You can purchase e-Book pro and write your own test engine to sell the product by yourself. The name e-Book pro is misleading. It is not just an e-Book, it is capable of doing anything web programming can do. With client side scripting it is easy to develop the logic to handle the test simulation. It is also very secure (no one can steal your images, licensing problem is also taken care of). It is a solid product developed by Corey Rudl the Internet Marketing Guru.

If you are interested let me know. I am in the process of developing the test engine with the help of my forum members. If you are interested in joining the independent publisher yahoo group let me know.

Thanks,
Bala

[Mikalai Zaikin]

Originally posted by Keristufer Blaze:
I purchased several exams from you guys. After installing them, I had to format my computer and reinstall the operating system.

I had similar experience. I downloaded trial version of SCBCD WhizLabs simulator and installed. Then I found that MSIE started freezing periodically. It was not possible to work after that. I was going to reinstall OS, but before that I uninstalled WhizLabs simulator. My MSIE started working again !!! Then I repeated several times to make sure that problem was caused by Whizlabs software - and found that I was right.

Maybe it is better to complain Microsoft for their tools (VB, MSIE, ActiveX Controls, etc.). I know that MS software is not perfect and can cause interoperability problems on different platforms/configurations.

But it is surprising that company is ISO certified, this means
testing should be part of development process. Otherwise - what is the use of this certification ?

[Mikalai Zaikin]

Originally posted by bparanj:
Hello,

I am the author of the Object-Oriented Analysis and Design exam simulator sold by Whizlabs at a exorbitant price.

...

Thanks,
Bala

Hey Bala !

Look at this page.

You must be surprised (ofcourse, if your another name is not Bob).





regards,
MZ

[Bert Bates]

You guys are on the edge here...

We're not interested in shutting down a little healthy debate, but let's all remember to keep it friendly!

Questions?

[Valentin Crettaz]

I can see that some of you have had a hard time with Whizlabs' products. Personally, I must be really lucky because I have almost all of their products installed on my machine and never had any problem with them. I have installed them on almost all Microsoft OS and Linux also.

I've also had the chance to work as a co-author on their SCBCD exam simulator and I have never experienced any problem with them. In the contrary, I have built a very good and long-lasting relationship with them. Their team is really friendly and helpful. Of course, as in every company, they can be overwhelmed sometimes. I can assure you that this is NORMAL. I don't think we can blame them for using Microsoft technology (as good or bad as it may be for some of you) either.

I don't want to be political here, I don't want to preach in favor of one or the other party either. As venerable Bert said, I just want to keep this place as friendly as possible. If you guys have critics, that's just fine as long as you make them sound constructive. Personally, I like critics when they are well argumented, objective and legitimate. If your only goal is to destruct other people's work, then you might just as well leave, we don't need you around here and we won't miss you either.

By the way, bparanj, if you are planning on staying around the saloon, you can start by changing your tone, then please take a look at the JavaRanch's Naming Policy and change your displayed name to conform with it. Thank you in advance
[ June 19, 2004: Message edited by: Valentin Crettaz ]

[Marcus Green]

I would like to echo what Valentin has said. I have been involved with Java certification since 1998, co-authored two books on the subject, and been a technical editor on three other Java books. I have had dealings with WhizLabs for around 3 years, I have been tracking every public posting I can find and have had many private emails about their products. I have installed their products without problem. I sell a product that is a rival to one of their products.

The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. I have placed links on my web sites to their sites because I believe their products are good and their customer service more than acceptable, and prices are reasonable.

Note that bparanj appears to have been employed by WhizLabs at some time and thus appears to be commenting from the perspective of an employee rather than a customer.

[Bob Runstein]

Whizlabs asked me to add my comments to this thread since Bala (bparanj) and I co-authored the OOAD exam for Whizlabs.

Bala had taken the IBM exam and made a proposal to Whizlabs to create an exam simulator. Whizlabs suggested that he could complete it faster if he had a co-author. Bala knew me from my postings on the Yahoo scea_j2ee group and generously offered me 50% of the royalties if I would assist him on the project. Bala's role was to come up with the questions and case studies on the basis of his familiarity with the IBM exam, while my role was to insure the quality of the questions and to write the explanations for the answers. Whizlabs posted my resume on their site promptly upon receiving it. I can only presume that Bala's is missing because he did not provide it.

Our collaboration went very smoothly, but I did feel Bala was overly harsh and intollerant in his communications with Whizlabs. For my part, I felt that Whizlabs was very accommodating to us as authors, and made every attempt to comply with our requests.

The entire process was not without hiccups, however. While I had no problem installing their software on Windows XP Professional, I discovered that the content was not properly imported into their exam engine. Problems included omitted periods (full stops) from many sentences, exhibits that could not be fully viewed because they were too large for the screen and did not have scroll bars, varying paragraph indentation and spacing from question to question, empty answer choices, answer choices from multiple questions appearing as the choices for one question, missing exhibits, etc. This resulted in considerable rework on my part to correct the errors and could have been avoided had Whizlabs been more specific about the format in which they were to receive the content and provided more QA oversight on their end. While having to do the rework was painful for me, Whizlabs was willing to make as many corrections as I requested so that in the end I was satisfied that we had produced a quality product.

Comments in this thread about exhorbitant price vs. reasonable royalties seem to be in conflict. Royalties are based on a percentage of the price so authors benefit from higher priced products. I have found Whizlab's author royalty percentage to be quite fair and on a par with what book publishing companies pay. Certainly, if you own an exam engine, create the content, and are willing to do the marketing, distribution and support yourself, you get to keep 100% of the sales price, but you also get to pay 100% of the expenses, not to mention the cost of your time.

Based on this one project, my experience with Whizlabs has been very positive.

[Nicholas Cheung]

I would like to add some experiences on the exam simulators.

Honestly, I feel Whizlab's products cannot use to compare to books. Even though the software, for example, contains high quality questions, for , say, SCBCD, I still feel that HF EJB is a must. We cannot simply use the software without a book.

If you let me to choose only 1, as a customer, I definitely will choose HF EJB, no matter how good the questions are. This is becos, I may not only need the book when I took the exam, I may refer to it in my job.

While simulators can use as an exam practice, I do feel it is a bit expensive. When INESystems, softSCBCD and EJB+ are in low prices (the most expensive one is still less than USD 20, I got EJB+ and INESystems' for free), Whizlabs' costs around USD 60-70. I have just taken SCBCD, and scored 95%. I used HF EJB, together with EJB+ and INESystems. Thus, Whizlabs defintely is not the only way to score high. I do feel that questions in EJB+ and INESystems are very similiar to the real questions.

As a result, even if I dont use Whizlabs, I can use other simulators to achieve high scores, I will not spend so much in Whizlabs, even though it may have a even higher quality! I wont willing to spell 3 times price for just having 3 more correct answers in my exam for 100%.

In addition, I do try to download the trial version of Whizlabs' SCBCD simulator. I even cannot install it on my Windows XP! When I double click the software, there is an error message that said the value of the integer is out of range!!!

I know I am not the only one who has problems with Whizlabs' software. I do wish Whizlabs can improve the quality of the software.

Nick

[Sathya Srinivasan]

Hi all,

I think enough has already been posted in this thread in response to bparanj's post (flame?).

I agree with a few of those responses and would like to add my 2c to provide alternate views/experiences in this regard.

Background:

I recently co-authored the SCMAD simulator with 'Sivasundaram Umapathy' another poster in this thread.

Experience:

My experience overall has been roughly similar to that of 'Valentin Crettaz' and 'Bob Runstein'. I believe the royalty share is fair and acceptable (although the deliverable demanded far more time than what I had expected - my fault entirely though, as it was my first experience and hence did not estimate my time correctly).

Our liaison manager was very understanding and very responsive in replying to our mails and questions and was also very accommodating when we juggled the deliverable dates to fit around our schedule. I personally never received any word or response that was out of line or even border-line. During the whole process, the staff was very corteous.

Bob Runstein: ...I discovered that the content was not properly imported into their exam engine. Problems included omitted periods (full stops) from many sentences...

I am yet to go through the software itself carefully. But I should definitely mention that the staff that corrected the mistakes in my drafts were very diligent. They had corrected each and every grammatical error meticulously. Sometimes, they even commented my explanations with very interesting questions which made me think more and format the answer more clearly.

Bob Runstein: ...have been avoided had Whizlabs been more specific about the format in which they were to receive the content ...

They were also very strict about the format, possibly because of the experience quoted above, which makes me feel that they learn from their mistakes, which to me, is a very good sign.

On Nicholas Cheung's comments, I agree that some books can go a long way in one's preparation towards an exam, but a simulator is definitely helpful in getting a feel for an exam and also helps you better pace yourself. From the posts here, I see that people have complained about the quality of the software in some aspects, but no issues have been raised as far as I know about the content of the simulator, which is the more important factor.

Much like when you a book, you check the author's credentials, I think the same holds true for a simulator also.

Although I might be a bit biased in this regard as I am also a content developer for WhizLabs, I see that the others who have authored the simulators from WhizLabs are sincere participants in JavaRanch and their posts have always been very helpful and honest.

I also completely agree with Bob's observation.

Certainly, if you own an exam engine, create the content, and are willing to do the marketing, distribution and support yourself, you get to keep 100% of the sales price, but you also get to pay 100% of the expenses, not to mention the cost of your time.

I guess this is similar to a developer writing his own home-grown implementation of something that's already out there. Everyone would like to create their own version of everything, but in many cases, it does not make any common or economical sense to do so.

One final quote:

If you're not on the edge, you're taking up too much room.

I think I have taken up enough room. Hopefully this thread will stop here and not become a war of words.

Our aim in this ranch is to study, share, and better ourselves and not bicker and waste everyone's time. "Right of Speech" harbors a very thin border with "Slander".

Peace to everyone!!

[Ashik Uzzaman]

I have worked with Whizlabs in couple of their produtcs as reviewer and a few questions developer. I have to differ with bparanj that I never had problem getting support from whizlabs people when I needed them. I could install all whizlabs software without problem in my windows machine except one which was due to my mistake in copying the product serial number correctly and I got response within a few hours with a new key/serial number when I asked them.

[Marcelo Beckmann]

Now I�m partaking as beta tester in the exam simulator for
the SCMAD test.

I�m liking the product, the questions are consistents and always
in the SCMAD context.