Talk:SmartDraw
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Referenced reviews and related articles.
- The new material means the article meets the criteria for Notability. Removed the tag. - Bladeswin | Talk to me | 19:06, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Reads like an advert
This reads like an advert for SmartDraw Alan2here 16:01, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] NPOV Discussion
I agree with Alan2here; this article reads very much like an advertisement. Jonah 20:54, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Neutrality, Notability
Reads like an advert imo. The bit about the specialist versions doesn't agree with me, I can't put my finger on why. I do note that the sources of the statistics are Smartdraw press releases. I'm looking for something which names Smartdraw as the DOJs graphics program... Maybe I'm going blind, but so far all I've found is that the DOJ purchased 25,000 seats. Ten million product downloads? Yeah, it's in a press release. Note though that it doesn't say ten million sales. What is a product download? Does that include updates? Does it include Trial versions, templates (software) and other free products? I'm not saying that it is a lie, but I do think it could be misleading. Google: 7,360,000 results for Quickbooks and 1,170,000 results for Smartdraw. quickonlinetips.com claims that firefox has had over three hundred million downloads. digg.com and skypejournal.com claim that skype has had five hundred million downloads. I searched million+downloads on Google. blogs.msdn.com claims that IE7 has passed one hundred million downloads - and IE7 hasn't been around since 1994. I had 56,900,000 results from my search. 50,000 results for smartdraw+download+million or 1,750,000 results for skype+download+million. Actually if you read http://www.freshnews.com/news/computers-internet/article_24710.html?SmartDraw.com it might cast some light on the DOJ thing. They claim that from the year 2000, the Department of Justice (Amongst others) has (NB the article is dated 2005, whereas the Smartdraw press release is dated 2006) adopted Sanction as their standard drawing program - and Sanction was bundled with Smartdraw. I couldn't access the Sanction homepage but if Sanction still has a bundled Smartdraw License, then the DOJ may well have bought 25,000 copies of Sanction and received Smartdraw as basically a gift. I couldn't find any reference to the event that didn't refer to smartdraw.com or Presynct and I think that smartdraw.com may be the primary resource. Is it a reputable source? The press release is a marketing move designed to win credibility, reputation and market share (imo) and I think it might be biased and intentionally misleading. Note also that in freshnews article 24710 it claims that smartdraw is the internet's #1 provider of easy-to-use business graphics software. Openoffice.org, Photoshop and GIMP can all be used in business and can all be easy to use. I think they all are. That's just my opinion, so I think this "#1" thing is also mere opinion. It then continues to say that Smartdraw is in the most visited 0.1% of internet sites. Is that true? I'm not going to search, I don't think I'll find any supporting evidence. I'd never even heard of it before today. How many internet sites are there? if it is in the top 0.1% then perhaps it is notable, but I'm not convinced that supplying thousands of (free?) licenses to a government department or reaching ten million (free?) downloads makes a program notable. All up, I don't think the article content is verifiable because I don't think it cites refutable sources (and I'm not sure that any even exist) - and even if the statistics are correct on a literal level, I suspect that they misrepresent the actual data. Whether or not they are true - and whether or not they embellish/mislead/exaggerate/generalise, I wonder if they make Smartdraw notable. If Smartdraw has had ten million downloads since 1994, what if five million were seven day time limited demos which limit printing to three print jobs (and all exports/prints have watermarks in black)? Of the hypothetical five million remaining product downloads, what if three million are complementary licenses? Of the two million product downloads, what if one million is product upgrades and one million is free templates/add-ins (such as a PDF exporter)? Then they'd have made a total of zero internet sales in thirteen years (although they'd be telling the truth when they said they'd had ten million "product downloads"). So yeah the tone of the article is "BOAST"... Is there bite to match the bark? My search continues. SneakyWho am i 06:52, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, that freshnews article was plastered with ads - even the paragraph saying that Smartdraw is so popular contains an imperative. Readers (consumers) are instructed to visit www.smartdraw.com for more information. The freshnews article seems like an ad in a blog. Or maybe a sponsored news article in a blog. And one other thing. Oh bother. I forgot it again. SneakyWho am i 07:20, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
