>I think what we really need is less commercialism and more>freeware. The relentless drive for the next buck has taken>allot of the fun out of this wonderful hobby.>>Please don't flame me. I've heard it all before and I really>don't care if anyone else agrees with me or not.>>I do know one thing for sure--I enjoyed this hobby more back>in the days when the prevailing motto was "Lets Keep It Free">No flame, but these days I'm much too picky, and for the most part, prefer models with years and years of experience behind them. I expect the poor souls that build them, to eat.. :DThere are still a few out there who have time and resorces to build freeware, but not many. Fact is, the bar has risen much to far, since those good old days.L.Adamsonedit: P.S. -- my favorite payware authors of today, DID put out a lot of freeware back in "those days".

Sir,I really appreciate your post. Your point is well taken. In my case this new era of flight simming has almost gotten beyond my ability to keep up with it and keep track of all of my purchased addons and needed updates. It seems to get more complicated with every year that passes. And much more expensive as well. In a way it reminds me of why Few people like to go to Waikiki these days. Excessive commercialism. I find the fact there are those like yourselves that can remember those good old days encouraging.I appreciate your response.flykingVirtual AviatorSystem Specs:Used to be Vista (XP Now)AMD Athlon 64 2413MHzNVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT, 256MBMemory: 3071MBSB X-FI Xtreme Gamer

>I just paid for an aircraft that was at best freeware quality.>There were no screenshots of the 2D cockpit. It looked like it>was out of FS3 at best. Why did you buy it is there was no proof of work? What is this horrible product?

I bought it because I had the HOTS for this type of aircraft. Always loved to fly this guy. The screen shots were all what I would say was from a distance. It was hard to see through the steam coming from my panting!! :9I will not mention the company because I think the other poster was correct. (L Adamson?) The bar has been raised and I for one will only pay for quality. No more "freeware" like purchases for me. As I mentioned above the company did refund my money. They have some nice aircraft on the market, this unfortunately was not one of them. IMHO

But ... but ... your title was "We need a BBB to protect us ..."Yet you're not telling us what the product was that you found so horrible so that others have a chance not to make the same mistake you made by purchasing this product?I'm confused.

What would be nice to have is a products page and a user review section similar to Newegg.com and Amazon.comA simple 1 star to 5 star ranking ***** as well as a Pros, Cons and remarks section. Thats it.Manny

OH BOY, here we go! To me it is simple. I am a private party who made a bad decision and was LUCKY enough to deal with the right company. I was handled properly and will remain quiet as I was not burned. There is a part of me that says yell at the top of my lungs the whole story and a side that says just do the right thing a let it go.NOW, if I was a BBB for FSX it would be a different MISSION. Spread the story asap so that ALL would know. They would be relying on me for that. For others, they may be happy with the aircraft as some portions of it were okay. As a private consumer I now realize that I have a VERY HIGH bar of expectations for addons and will be more careful in the future! I hope I was clear.

I'm on board with you Manny. 1-5 can't get you sued! As stated in another post I am discussing this with another gentleman that has an establidhed web page. All talk right now, but don't expect Tom to jump in. He has TOO many people/customers he could pisXXff.

I think you are being a tad presumptuous. Over nearly 11 years in existence, I think it is safe to say that we have P'O'ed every vendor out there at least once, including MS! :)I have no problem setting up a system whereby readers could enter a "poll" if you will giving various attributes of a product a 1 to 5 star rating. In fact, I will be putting a prototype system this weekend to let you folks check it out.

>I'm on board with you Manny. 1-5 can't get you sued! As>stated in another post I am discussing this with another>gentleman that has an establidhed web page. All talk right>now, but don't expect Tom to jump in. He has TOO many>people/customers he could pisXXff.>Hi Gary (and Tom)Gary, I might be the one you're talking to, but not sure because maybe more than one person have contacted you via private email. Anyhow, I'm not sure if you got my last email where I gave you the website address? But that's a very basic set up, and of course we can expand from that. Hopefully after the new year I can dedicate more time to this project. Tom and Co. surely have enough on their plate, why we couldn't jump in and help there should be no reason. I am willing to give back much more to the comunity than just the 8 years+ at AirSource.Let me know what you think and we'll take this a step at a time.

I like your trial idea Tom. Sounds like you might have several "polls" regarding an overall value of single product? I like that because someone who casts a 1 on whether a product is good or not means nothing to me. But if you have a scale for, Looks, Flight Systems, Flight Characteristics, etc., well then a simmer could make a judgment call on what he likes and doesn't like without trying to filter out all the subjective rants.Hope the trial is a success.

All, The only problem I see with a polling system is the person running FSX on a 5 year old machine and purchasing a product that will obviously not work well because that person chose to believe the minimum requirements to run FSX. Lian-Li PC60-B Case Corsair HX Series CMPSU-620HX 620W Power Supply Gigabyte P35 DS3R Intel Core2Duo E6850 Arctic Cooling Freezer7 Pro Crucual Ballistix 2GB PC2-8500 (DDR2-1066) EVGA 7950 GT OC 512 Mb Plextor PX-810SA/SW-BL 18X SATA DVD Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/sec Seagate Barracuda 7200.10250 GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/secCraig

Hi Tom,Yes, I was being presumptious. :) Must have had your Wheaties this morning. I'll be looking forward to the prototype. Like one person said I would have the rater rate their FSX machine. 1-5. If you need some help let me know!!

Hi Tom,Why don't we sit back and see what develops. I have a feeling that we are going to see a very helpful tool for the FSX community evolve. BTW thanks again for your interest!!

Tom,Neat idea, but how are you going to keep it free from manipulation, etc.It's common knowledge that a lot of on-line user submitted reviews are actually fraudulent (basically the seller and his cronies posting reviews themselves... all glowing of course... this is a huge problem in e-commerce).On the other hand, you can get a spate of negative reviews, and they wind up being posted by competitors or simply users, for example, who buy complex addons, and then get frustrated because they can't be bothered to read the manual, and then they complain the product doesn't work when it's really their fault for not reading the manual.I personally prefer the present system where you have somewhat experienced reviewers who are subject to oversight by, say, the Avsim Board, versus something that will likely degenerate into a free-for-all.I can just see an unregulated poll winding-up like 90 percent of the user submitted reviews you read for various products on the Net ranging from bicycles to hair dryers, that is to say, meaningless.That's my two cents,Bryan