The support through these forums is outstanding and the manual is pretty darn good as well.
Agreed on both accounts. Recently I've been trying a demo version of one of the major raw converters. There's a user-to-user forum for it, but that I know of, no developers or tech support people at the company ever participate there. Do they "lurk"? Nobody knows. When serious problems arise, users are left to flounder around and advise one another. Sometimes the expert users can help, but as often as not they can't -- and all the while the devs remain silent. Not so here, and this company's outstanding support-forum was one of the reasons that I jumped at buying Photo Mechanic after I'd been using it for a relatively short time.
It couldn't be more obvious: good support -> customer loyalty -> word-of-mouth recommendations and continued upgrades, all of which are part of a business model for success; and it's completely mysterious to me how it is so many companies completely fail to understand this! And then I suppose they must wonder why their sales aren't better. In a word:
duh. :-)
I'm in a position in which I could get an inexensive (legit!) copy of one of the major D.A.M. programs -- but nope; I'm going to hang in there and wait for this company's "catalogue version" of Photo Mechanic. I'm sure that the support for it will also be first-rate.
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