Poor documentation and information regarding GreenCloud

Eco-friendly virtual printer driver to save money, save trees, and exchange your documents with popular cloud storage services
jbattell
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Joined: Tue Dec 27, 2011 10:36 pm

Poor documentation and information regarding GreenCloud

Post by jbattell »

I have tried the GreenCloud printer, and generally like it, and have already recommended it to others. I especially like the high-quality and small file size of the PDF files it produces. There is hardly any info about it, though. You do not tell what OS's it is compatible with. You do not tell about the limitations of the free version. It was by accident that I discovered the free version will only print about 50 pages to a PDF. Thankfully I discovered this before deleting the files I was using GreenCloud to convert to PDF. I wonder what other surprises there are yet to be discovered?
I like the program enough to pay the $27 for the full version. However, after filling in all the info to purchase it I noticed a check box to "automatically renew." I had assumed that for the $27 the program would be mine to use. Apparently this is not the case, however. How long will the program work before you demand more money to keep using it? I am only interested in using it on my computers, mainly to produce PDF files. I am not interested in a "Cloud" subscription.
While I like the PDF and printing capabilities, but at this point I have no interest in buying something that there is so little information about.
I am a long-time Image Resizer customer, but so far I am not happy with the uncertainty about this new product.
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Fabrice
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Post by Fabrice »

Hi,
you are absolutly right, it is a new product and we have plenty of things to clarify, even on our side.

about the automatically renew, I will check what happened, it was not my purpose to work that way, at least it is not completely defined. We put a limit of 50 pages because we were implementing the limitation somewhere, we are open to discussion, my purpose would be to have donation from personal users, and licenses for companies, as we need to live also. but I don't want to stop the motivation from the users.

about the documentation, we try to make software easy to use and which doesn't require the documentation, in the same time, we try to be in touch with users and reply all the questions ( forum was a way, so I reply the same way, nothing to hide )

about the cloud, it is not limited in any way, but I can understand you don't need it either.

to come back to the topic, what would be your suggestion as a "limitation" for personal users ? a max number of pages to print per day ? a max number of page to print ( actually we have performance issues with very large document to print, we are working on it )

I wait for your feedback :) and thank you again for your honest and direct feedback you have provided.
jbattell
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Joined: Tue Dec 27, 2011 10:36 pm

more feedback

Post by jbattell »

Hi Admin-
Thank you for your prompt and relevant reply. The same day I submitted this thread I spent an hour or so in a "live chat" with Corel tech support regarding a problem I am having with PaintShop Photo, and never could get beyond the irrelevant answers they were obviously reading off a prepared list.
When I wrote of documentation, I was referring to the fact that the web site says nothing about a page limit in the free version, and nothing as to what operating systems it can be used on. I am using it on Windows 7, and have also installed & used it as a test on a Windows XP netbook. Seems to work well on both systems.
I have found the GreenCloud Printer to be easy to use, requiring no instruction manual.
As to the page limit, the 50 pages is generous for free, personal use. The project I was working on, while for personal use, was about 500 scanned pages of an old book from 1913 (and in the public domain) which I had downloaded from the Internet Archive. After cropping, converting to greyscale, and making some brightness and contrast adjustments to all the pages, I used GreenCloud to create a single PDF of the pages. Thankfully, before deleting all the pages I had spent several hours working on (as I usually do after creating a PDF), I discovered that GreenCloud had only printed the first 50 pages or so. Apparently the GreenCloud web page still does not inform people about the page limit.
Again, I am very impressed with GreenCloud, especially its high quality, small file size PDF creation. I hope you get the issues with printing a large document resolved. I use Word 2010, NitroPDF Pro, and PDF995 to create PDF files, and I have found GreenCloud superior to them in small file size and picture quality.
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Fabrice
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Post by Fabrice »

thanks for the feedback , and once again, you are 100% right about our lack of information about the limitation because it is still something pending and that's why we discuss about the limits to set.
actually someone posted a crazy review link of a lot of pdf creator tools and we are using this source to compare and check the pdf quality and performance ( this part has been integrated from an existing pdf sdk so we have little control on it ), we are more active in the interface of the program and some post processing to reduce the ink /paper.

I removed the renewal option , as I agree it was confusing and not attended to be what I wanted to do.

Could We use our nice quote for a testimonial page to be defined ?

in the same time, I have opened a thread to discuss clearly about the difference between the free and pro version, we have discussed this with the team and we are still in the process to correct or improve some details in the program.
http://forum.obviousidea.com/threads/22 ... difference

As discussed , the performance shouldn't be too bad even with more pages, but honestly we didn't test 500 pages yet !

so in short you think we should / could decrease the max pages to be printed in a free version to less than 50 pages ?
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