If you have the time, I would be interested in some additional detail on the points you mention below. I have been wondering
about those items myself but have been hesitant to actually install 6.0 to check them out for myself.
>its a nice improvement over 5.24
>but I have seen a few minor issues
>and some changes that are taking time to get use to.
Thanks,
Carlton
I just received the keys this morning, although getting them by email is really just for your own records in case you want to manually install them if you have no internet access. The software seems to get automatic key updates from their servers so even before I opened the email it was already set for a 1 year expiry date from the 30 day date I was seeing the day before. It’s exactly the same as most of the Anti Virus software update engines. I am not a big fan of visible time limits on software even if this one will not render it useless.
its a nice improvement over 5.24
It is a nice improvement, mostly in the Logbook. The ability to see little icons on the cluster that show if you ( worked the country / worked the country on this band / worked the station / QSL Status / is he Lotw / is he eQsl /) Plus several other thing that makes the cluster much more useful for knowing who you need to work for getting band fills and new modes.
There are numerous other little tweaks that make the HRD experiences better, its too long to list but most are not new features just things that make old features work better or in some cases they now work
I have not had much time to work with the Awards section but it does seem to have a lot of new additions and features added to it.
>but I have seen a few minor issues.
Since most of the changes are in the Logbook you would expect that the issues will also be in the Logbook and that’s the case.
1) The first thing that I noticed is that the “World Map with the grey line” no longer centers my location on the Map. Instead I end up being all the way on the extreme left side and the India/China boarder are now in the center of my map
Hmmmmm
and there is no way I can change that. This pretty much makes the grey line map useless until the problem is fixed.
2) The LoTW status indicator on the cluster list is not accurate. When it shows a station as an LoTW member its correct but on the other hand it does not recognize all stations that are LoTW members as being members. I have had several stations show up with no “L” indicator but when I go to QRZ it shows that they do use LoTW. HRD6 uses some sort of compiled database of LoTW users that it updates itself, but does not seem to reference QRZ for the lotw Info. In all fairness to HRDllc I have heard QRZ is not all that accurate for listing LoTW members but IMO why not use both this compiled database and QRZ together and do a simple “OR” statement when deciding to check off the LoTW box!
I would rather take my chances and make a QSO and find out later that he was not on LoTW and live with the knowledge that at least I have him in the Log, rather than passing him over completely and find out later that he was indeed an LoTW member and I let a $$ Free Band fill pass me by.
3) I ran a quick test and worked a station to see if it would show up as worked in the cluster listing but it did not. This forced me to make a support phone call, which ironically was not needed for installation and configuration LOL. I was told that it could be because of the order in which I have my lookups setup in the config settings. When I get home I will test that out and let you know. For now I consider it NOT to be a bug, but just an improper setting on my part.
>and some changes that are taking time to get use to.
All the Icons that I described in the “Nice Improvements” section end up being a double edged sword. I look at them and I get confused as to what it all means. Keep in mind you have complete control on how many of these you want on the screen but the minimum I found was 5 for getting a good sense of who you need to work.
It also means that I now have to figure out what all 5 are telling me! This is one of those things that will just take time to get use to. The old HRD 5 use of a simple Green check with a Plus in it was a lot simpler but it also had a lot less info. I will get back to you guys later about my opinions on this new system and let you know if it’s just a case of getting use to it or if it needs to be stream lined better.
Lastly the “lookup” column on the left hand pane is much more detailed but I really really wish that I could sort which boxes I wanted on top and which is second etc. It really needs customization.
The Wikipedia integration is a nice feature I just wish they did not use the “Globe” icon to activate it. This is sort of counter intuitive as globe means map and I expect google earth to come up not wikipedia.
So far I am very happy with the software, it’s much more polished than 5.24 and has a lot of nice additional features. Any bugs I have encountered will most likely be squashed in the next release.
I want you guys to understand that I am looking at this with a critical eye, I don’t own any stock in the company and our relationship has been a bit rocky from day one. When I say certain things I am more or less pointing out mostly the negatives which are what most people are going to Harp on when they shell out $100 for something that use to be free, so what I am doing is letting you know what to expect.
The positives with this software are numerous and would take a huge post to list, but at the end of the day I guess for $100 most of you are expecting a lot of positives and in terms of polishing of features in HRD5 and I can say that ver 6 delivers that. For some users the enhanced Award tracking will be that must have feature, for others it will be the cluster and logging updates but for me I can’t say it has a must buy feature yet. That feature for me is promised for ver 5.1 in the CW Sweeper and I have no doubt they will deliver it.
BTW I was under the impression that all paid owners could access the Beta Version, I think that info was posted before on several forums, yet I am now told that by support that I cannot access it
I wish I could have seen that version because I think it probably had fixes for several of my issues and it would have had the CW super sweeper which is the main reason I decided to get the software.
