notifier verifire softwarw

If you manage to get ahold of one, I'm sure Notifier would be very interested in the identity of your source. If I were a servicing dealer, I would not want to jeopardize my lively-hood to make a "few bucks". Bass, on the other hand, would sell you the combination to his dad's safe and send you the keys to his house (as long as you paid the shipping).

Frank,

I understand your point, I really do.

But, you can usually pick them up on Ebay, its just that there are non listed right now, so its hardly like its a "top secret" kinda item.

One thing that does piss me off about the whole thing is this. Who owns the fire alarm? Building owner, right? If he wants me to fix/work on/polish the chrome on his fire alarm, he should have the right to pick who he wants to do it. Its not Notifier's friggen pannel any more. I screw it up, its my problem.

You think Ford should have the right to tell you that you HAVE to go to the dealer??

The whole dealer-proprietary concept is a pile of horsefeathers!

Cheers

Bill

Frank Ols> > Hello all,

I will second that all proprietary products do is protect dealers who are afraid to have to compete in the open market from losing accounts becuse of excessive pricing and poor service. hate to tell you how many radionics,dmp etc panels i have pulled out and replaced with over the counter stuff becuase customers were so pissed at the install or servicing customer.

Nick, I think you are missing the point. Unlike other "proprietary" products, Notifier fire panels can always be programmed from the front panel. While that might not be the most convenient way to program, it is all that is needed. If you have the correct programming software you can also upload and download the equipment with a pc.

Compare that to, say, an EST-3 panel. Can't do anything from the front panel. If you have the software AND the dongle required to make it work, you can only download. There is no way to upload the program out of EST's fire panels and you are stuck either trying to get it from the installing distributor (good luck) or starting from scratch and writing your own program, not a simple task on a large or complicated system.

My point is that Notifier has taken the high ground, made their systems uploadable and provided complete programming ability with no software or equipment needed.

Oh yeah, F*** EST (GE)!

Mike B

Just,

I would have to agree with you that compared to Edwards, Notifier has, at least allowed programming from the front panel. And, I will second the motion to frak EST.

I do beleive though that if I can call up a company and provide them with some sort of "certification" i.e. state alarm liscence (got), electrical liscence (got) NICET certification (got) that they should say, "fine.. you can work on our sh**."

I don't know what standards they DO use to pick their dealers but I have run into some dealer employees installing fire alarms ******Life-Saftey-Sytems***** who I wouldn't trust to put a frozen dinner into a microwave.

Just my rambelings....

Cheers

Bill

Just Some Guy wrote:

Those EST dongles aren't issued to EST dealers, they are issued to the individual technicians that complete the 2 week on-site training class. Just because you work for an EST dealer, doesn't mean you can work on an EST3.

Ford can't do that because of the Magnuson Moss Warranty Ac of 1975. Otherwise, they probably would. The MM Act may have some relevance to proprietary FA panel service. I wonder if it's ever been challenged in court.

It doesn't appear to apply to products sold for resale or to commercial products.

Doug

The building owner does have the right to choose who he wants to work on the panel, Notifier will issue a programming code to the owner if he signs a waiver so that anyone can access the programming from the "keypad" on the panel, but Notifier has the right to decide to choose who they sell their software to.

Notifier isn't saying that you can't work on the panel, what they are saying is that they won't sell their product or software to you, the product you would have to buy from a dealer .

I think there is a double standard here, many people think that the software to panels such as DSC, Ademco etc. should only be available to Security dealers, other than the fact that most of these companies only appear to pay lip service to that premise, what's the difference between Notifier and the Security Panel Manufacturers.

I'm not a Notifier dealer and I would always recommend that people avoid a proprietary solution unless there really is no alternative.

Doug

I am not an EST or Notifier dealer. However, I can understand why some companies prefer to sell through dealers and not distribution. If you are a small dealer then the chances of staying current on training for a product is less and the tech support time the company has to spend on you tends to go up. These companies do keep track of that sort of thing (down to the minute actually). They also believe in the 80% - 20% rule. That is 20% of the dealers do 80% of the sales volume. To see the industry evolve over time from a dealer base that was a mostly mom and pop size sort of business to what it is today is not without regret. That said (again I am NOT an EST dealer) if you only installed a couple of those systems a year I am certain you would eat a lot of tech time. Talk about an over engineered product. There is no way to simply walk up and upload and download a high end EST panel unless you basically wrote the program to begin with. If you've ever done an EST system it takes days some time to program, debug, and test, especially on a big system. Granted the system can do just about anything you could imagine, but parsing through a database like that (especially since it is Borland) in all that picky point by point detail? If you didn't have to sell it to keep your status as a dealer and it wasn't a spec job why would you? I am not trying to pick on EST but how about Stentofon for a good bit of unnecessary complexity. We had a Stentofon shut down because the customer's network configuration changed - they added more routers to the network path we used - and no one could remember that you need to check multiple routers versus single router. Same story about not a dealer and not a spec? So I think there is more going on by not using distribution than to protect substandard dealers. I think there is a lot of time saved in engineering a product knowing no matter how stinking complex they make it there will have to be a group of technicians forced to be shipped off to learn it. I think that sort of product delivery environment wouldn't make it in a distribution product. It is a choice someone is making. And after all that training for sales guys and technicians only to have a job underbid (either by mistake or smaller overhead) by a dealer getting it through (back door perhaps) distribution doesn't seem like something the factory boys could sell to authorized dealers.

"J. @netscape.net>" On 6 Oct 2006 12:27:53 -0700, "jewellfish"

The Edwards FireShield panels were designed to allow programming from the panel without software. However, the software is easy to use and cheap (free if you ask nice). I know because I was involved in the design discussions while my company was wrting the softwaree for them.

According to the FTC's explanation of the MM Warranty Act -- "Although tie-in sales provisions generally are not allowed, you can include such a provision in your warranty if you can demonstrate to the satisfaction of the FTC that your product will not work properly without a specified item or service..."