TextFlow fails to live up to its demo video

Demo videos are great, but if they promise something and don't tell you the full story, and they successfully get you to invest your time or money when the reality doesn't match up to the demo, then they can really just set a product up for a fall. This is true of TextFlow. The demo video makes it look great. What it doesn't tell you is that there are some important things it can't do.

It just so happened that, today, I'm collating some review comments on some release notes I wrote. I have three copies of a Word document and I need to merge the comments into a single document. The TextFlow video promised that it could do just what I was needing to do and would make my life easier. I therefore took the time to register for the beta and install the software.

The problem when you try it out is that TextFlow destroys the formatting in your Word documents and any images and tables simply disappear.

Now, okay, it's beta software. But Google and others have changed the definition of beta software. Just a few years ago "beta" meant the software was well short of release quality and you could expect it to contain bugs and missing chunks of functionality. The Gmail beta is an example of software that was perfectly usable, and used day in day out by millions of users, for a long time while it was still labelled a beta.

TextFlow, on the other hand, is an old-fashioned beta. Interesting to try out. But not much use for any serious use yet. The real problem is that the demo has left me seriously hacked off, with a very negative feeling towards the makers of TextFlow. If they'd just been a bit more honest about what the product can't yet do I wouldn't be left feeling duped by the video.