Concept X7: Worse Than I Thought

Believe it or not, my bad experience with Concept X7 got worse. When the software did not work as advertised, I uninstalled it. What I didn’t realize was that this simple action also disabled the Windows XP Tablet PC Edition’s ink capability. According to the TabletPCBuzz forum, several other users had this same experience.

Initially, I didn’t notice this problem. Since I was on vacation, I wasn’t using the ink-enabled applications I normally use when attending meetings at work. However, I tried to load GoBinder this morning to check some notes and got an error message. Thankfully, I had been following the thread on Concept X7 in the TabletPCBuzz forum, otherwise I may have thought the problem was with GoBinder.

I then tried to load OneNote. It flashed the splash screen and then choked my system, forcing a reboot. Once I had Windows loaded, I tried to load Windows Journal, which gave me a message that there was something wrong with Windows’ inking capabilities. That was all the confirmation I needed.

I then did a system restore and now—thank God—everything is back to normal. (I actually had to do this twice, since the first time I didn’t pick a restore point early enough.) All in all, this experience cost me about three hours of frustration.

So what did I learn? Four things:

1. Stay away from the “bleeding edge.” Don’t install every piece of seemingly cool software without checking to see what other users have experienced. The best place to research this is in the many user forums on the Web.
   
   
2. Pay attention to the marketing. If you experience problems with the developer’s Web site and download procedure, it may be a harbinger of things to come. If they are sloppy with the marketing, they may also be sloppy with their code—which was exactly what I experienced with Concept 7.
   
   
3. Create a system restore point. Do this before installing any new software. On most systems, you can find this under Start | Accessories | System Tools. This way you can “roll back” your system to the point before things went awry. Force yourself to get into this habit. (I’m preaching to myself!)
   
   
4. Warn other users. Hopefully, you can save other users the pain of wasting their time and potentially damaging their systems. Again, the various user forums are a great place to do this.