Patience: Patience: So how long did you sign up to be a part of TREG?

Days after it was announced. I didn’t sign up at first because I assumed they intended to just get people “in the business”. Not that I would have thought that would have been a good idea. I had experience as a beta tester before and found problems no one else did who were far more technically qualified than me. But I pay attention. I’ll try crazy things to both find and narrow down the cause of a problem. So, someone else told me I should sign up so I did and was lucky to be chosen in the first group.

Patience: Patience: Did you think you’d still be having to report back to Waytools after two years ?

Yes and no. I had hoped that WT was correct that we would test for a few weeks, not find any serious issues, and they would ship. But we - including myself - immediately found issues. I’ve been through this before and the pattern of problems/delays continue to fit:

They experienced problems before treg, using their own people. As problems came up, they quickly made adjustments to solve them. This, in turn, made them think it was just about ready to ship. After all, they had probably eliminated the problems they had found and knew if a few new problems came up, they could probably knock them out quickly too.

So they sent out test units, thinking it would just be a fairly quick confirmation or minimal adjustments. Surprise! They were wrong. Suddenly it turns out there are vastly more typing styles - often little quirks - that they had not experienced. Many more typing environments as well which could impact BT-LE. Etc. But at first they probably felt it was like the prior problems - a quick adjustment to solve each. But they just kept coming because, frankly, this is a heck of a lot more complicated than most people, even those in related businesses, realize. I and others have tried to explain this.

Combine this with the fact that a problem often needs to be captured in a log - often hard to do when it is intermittent - and some problems took much longer to solve that those “in house”.

So, I certainly never thought it would take THIS long, but I can see enough to understand why.

The YES part of my answer is that, from the start, WT said treg testing would continue after GR and would deal with future products. So, yes, I expected to be doing this for a long time.

Patience: Patience: And if so, why would you???Cuz, to me it sounds like a job, a very low paying job!

I’m not doing it for pay, though I’ll accept anything they want to send my way! I’m doing it for multiple reasons:

Like many others, it is nice to get something early even if it isn’t ready for GR. I simply enjoy the process of testing. I know from past experience I can do well at testing so I want to help any way I can. I knew that I would be willing to do what I could to keep people informed of what I experienced - because I would want people to do that for me if I wasn’t a tester! Not everyone wants to do that. Some don’t because they get tired of being attacked. But I’ll give information regardless. As a teacher for decades, I am used to doing something I happen to like doing even when the pay is too low for the work I do. But I am getting, imo, some payment. I got to use a TB for 2.5 years so far and I truly love it. That is worth a lot to me right there - though if it never ships and they either take them back or they eventually wear out so I have to go back to a regular keyboard, I’m going to be really annoyed!

Patience: Patience: this must be the most intricate, complex, piece of technology the world has ever seen!

It is very intricate and complex. Especially in the firmware that makes it all work. Which probably explains why there have been none of the “knockoffs within 6 months” that were predicted back in 2015. It is just really hard. True, I don’t know the technical details, but I’m good at getting an accurate feel for such things, even if not actually able to do the coding myself.

Maybe you could think of it like the “common cold” - seemingly not nearly as complicated as many diseases, yet they never could solve it. Part of the reason was that the “common cold” wasn’t just one thing. There are, at least, over 100 variations. Well, that’s what we have with typing styles and environments - except a lot more. People seem to think it is just about your finger hitting a certain spot and you get a certain character, as you would with a regular keyboard where there is one keycap for each main character. The TB doesn’t work that way. The details of the tech are way over my head - and most people’s - but it can’t be the same as a regular keyboard.

Again, I don’t object to anyone being upset. Or, specifically, angry about communication, updates that not only don’t happen when WT says, but are literally months late for something that was supposed to be “next week”. There are other complaints that are reasonable in full or in part.

I just don’t think those real issues justify every criticism.