Anybody else seen this? http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/metastocktips/message/2677

The key part being:

That will be the final nail in the coffin. It implies that none of the development staff or marketing people actually USE the product, certainly not with any degree of sophistication.

There's been no improvement for several years and four version. It's like the programmers aren't allowed to touch the primary code, other than to adjust it to make it work on each new version of Windows.

Hi Roy, I find that even more astounding than ignoring suggestions from the Forum and utter failure to improve the product since version 8.

According to Richard Dale, they are going to online-only data: http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/equismetastock/message/31717

That will slow Explorations beyond reason...cripple file-based add-ons, stop Excel interaction, prevent use of Specialized Data sources, etc.

Instead of adding improvements, they're removing features and downgrading performance.

I hope they fixed the Enhanced System Tester bugs that were in version 11 and below, such as these ones: http://forum.equis.com/forums/thread/18540.aspx http://forum.equis.com/forums/thread/29972.aspx (Especially this one - Equis admitted this is a bug) http://forum.equis.com/f...12/ShowThread.aspx#28412 Some of you might be thinking that some of the above are not bugs, but a Metastock user shouldn't have to implement awkward workarounds for what seems like a basic task. I won't be upgrading if they haven't been fixed. Anybody tried the above/noticed it has/hasn't been fixed? Thanks.

Any idea if EOD 12 works with Windows 8?

I've installed MS 11 Pro on Windows 8, no problems so far, although I haven't used it much.

Bulli, I have been using MS 12 since Monday, and I continue going back to MS 11. The poer console is nice, but for some reason I feel that I'm limited and is not friendly user to me. I'm sorry for upgrading to MS 12, and currently upset with them and I think this will hurt them all together an loose alot of users I see alot of other users agree to our opinion also that this is just a update and not a upgrade.

Have they increased the number of custom formulas allowed in version 12?

Henry, I hope you and your family are safe grounds while Hurricane Sandy passes through the area. Trading is suspended for Tuesday again. Keep safe

FWIW, I'd go back to 9.1, at least -- so you won't have to deal with online DRM. Actually, 8.0 was just fine.

It appears that the company now views MetaStock as merely a sales conduit for their data offerings, evidenced by the fact that there's been absolutely no development whatsoever. They are on track to become the Borland or Lotus 1-2-3 of TA software. This smacks of "accountant-style managment"; "milk" all you can out of it, rather than investing in development. What they call a "Version" would be a "Maintenance Update" for any other software product; 10 years and four "versions" of this amounts to nothing but band-aid work to keep the product running on new versions of Windows. Asking customers to pay for these "Maintenance Updates" is a strong clue -- they're NOT putting money into product development.

The data-based product has no interest for me, personally -- after using their data since day one, it became necessary to finally switch, after a year when lists were haphazardly re-arranged (ruining all my local charts), with the final straw being having to wait several months for the S&P 500 constituents list to be updated. Besides, the whole monthly update process (when on time) was so clunky and time-consuming on a monthly basis that I would NEVER go back. EVER.

For an alternative, I am currently taking a very serious look at AmiBroker. Seems to have a lot of power, dynamic development, an extremely active forum and exceptionally flexible data sourcing.

I continue with MS, since I'm become so familiar with it, but with no development after a decade, well, it's become outdated -- the ONLY saving grace is the conciseness & power it offers. That won't last forever.

My (sad) $0.02 worth for the day,