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I just wrote this post several hours ago, and already a reply to try and discredit what I've said. No I don't work for Helios, I'm just someone who happens to use their product and has helped me become very productive at what I do. I'm grateful and that's it.

Whoever made these posts did not have the patience to wait a day or two and reply to what I typed and make himself seem somewhat legitamate. Look at the traffic on this board. You have a table full of topics but most of these topics have around 0 to 3 replies. Not a very well traveled board, and one not worth visiting on a hourly basis unless you're really bored. However, I just typed up a post possibly discrediting a previous post, and only several hours later, I've already been discredited. How is this possible? Where did these users come from and why would they be here if they don't use Textpad? Have they all joined together under one cause to make sure no one gets tricked into using Textpad and its "inability" to load 5mb text files and also help reduce waste in the environment by recycling and flushing out logs? Most likely not.

You're someone who hates using Textpad, "It's just too slow", yet you frequently check a message board about this product when the number of posts it averages a day is less than 20? Who in their right mind if they were just the casual text editor user would go around to each text editor message board to check on topics? The only thing these boards would be discussing would be a product you don't even use which means it has no effect on your life at all. Does this make any sense? Who has the incentive to check a products message board if they don't use it? Only people who hate the product and the only reason a person would hate this product is if it took away some of their gross earnings.

Immediately after I write a rebuttal to these posts to describe my experience with this product, a new topic is created instantly to discredit Textpad again. Almost all text editors have the same functions and do the same thing. It's a very tight market, especially in shareware, and you only need one text editor. There is enough incentive to try and market your product in any way, especially at places that sell something similiar to yours. I've read some posts and they seem poorly "disguised" in trying to boost up their products over Textpad. Are there enough readers of this board to make that much of a difference? I have no idea and probably can't speak for Helios.

However, I can speak just as these people did earlier and say what I want. Just because they are only able to type one sentence doesn't make it any different from what I'm doing. Is this some kind of personal grudge on my behalf? No. No other text editor or software has ever done me harm or made me lose any vital data that would ever anger me except for Norton Systemworks. As I said earlier, I just went to download a new copy of Textpad and for once decided to click on the link to see what was inside here. I read some posts, saw what people said, made my own comparisons, and described my conclusions. I am currently checking this message board frequently because there are topics that I am curious about but normally I wouldn't go to a text editor forum. When these topics die out you probably won't ever see me make a post here again. I'm just stopping by which is what most regular users behaviors would be like. However, instant responses to posts that discredit the discreditors indicate users who see Textpad in a way that has nothing to do with opening large text files but more or less a personal one. Maybe even monetary.

You don't see Helios going around deleting these "problem" posts because they could be legitamate to some users and maybe someone might mention something they haven't seen yet. Anyone just browsing on through can just see the front page and notice the complaints. That in itself is like a cover to a magazine and a lot of people buy magazines just because of who's on the cover. They're willing to take a hit in this case if in fact this post did come from a real user because it isn't right to delete posts but I'm sure they've had some suspicions as well.

And in response to deleting posts, or censoring. If there is already two topics on "Why Textpad opens so slowly", why in the hell did someone just create a third one with the exact same topic. Shouldn't this only be one topic? If anything, these three topics should be combined into one post to centralize the conversation. I came in here just to add my personal experience. Someone actually replied to what I typed, so I replied back with my response. That's what you do in a message forum.

Guest wrote:Are you from Helios? If not, your own suspicions and persistent posts are quite lengthy and personal here. I'm not sure it belongs in this forum. What you might want to do is get back to the subject of the topic at hand and if open speech offends you so much, ask the forum administrator to kill this thread.

mike wrote:And if he's not from Helios, his rants are quite strange. Just stay on topic and never ever feed the troll.

More "lengthy and strange" posts is exactly what this forum needs. How can these forums (and TextPad) get more popular unless discussion increases? My opinion is that, instead of telling someone "you talk too much", rather you simply no longer contribute to that conversation. If others agree with you, they won't post replies either. But the conversation is there for others if they want it.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with lengthy discussions. Strange subjects are great too. On the other hand, I do also agree that starting flame-wars is not a good thing, and topics should be on target somewhat.

But, basically, discussions are exactly what these forums are about.

Point is, if you want to be strange and off-topic, start your own blog and rant on. But we're here to talk about TextPad: how it works, to help each other, share ideas on features, improvements, enhancements and such. What seemed strange was anpham noted that being honest and asking questions was somehow going to "hurt sales of TextPad." And for this thread, that's off topic. TextPad should continue to grow its user base on the merits of it being a great-product-always-getting-better. Not because someone says, "Don't say this, don't say that, or ssshhhh, don't mention the elephant in the living room."

Forums are for discussions, not personal agendas, vendettas, trolling, flames, or protecting territories. Therefore, let's get back to talking about the thing we love: TextPad.

How has any of my posts been off topic. I opened my account yesterday and made three posts on my personal experience with Textpad and used UE as a comparison editor because this forum seems to mention them often. In addition to making my comparisons which are 100% real I also am allowed to discuss things which I think may be real or unreal.

One of the great things about the Internet is anonymity. You can hide yourself to other users fairly well (but not completely to servers). With this ability you can assume another identity rather quickly by just changing your alias. It may not be the most common thing to do but I'm sure it's one of those things everyones done at least once. I've done it and am not ashamed to admit it.

If you're a veteran of message forums then obviously you'd be aware of fake posters and re-posters. This happens in every forum, no matter what the subject is. Some guy wants to get a girl but she just rejected him, so he's going to try another alias and be a different guy and maybe this girl will like his new alias personality better. They haven't met yet or exchanged real life data yet so she's never going to know. A crude example and not one for a text editor forum, but it works.

For instance, you have a search engine like PriceGrabber.com. It's used by many and displays the lowest price available on the NET for a certain product. Very useful. It also displays company ratings along with their level of service and customer satisfaction. These ratings helps a user decide which store is the right one for them. I use it on all my online purchases.

I happened to purchase a video card from one of these stores before using PriceGrabber. This store showed a price that was remarkably lower than any of the competitors and it didn't seem real to me at first. So I went to their website and read their description and looked at the product pin number and it was the same exact pin number as the one I wanted. Search engines can't tell if a company is lying or not and they are completely driven on pin numbers and the price the store gives them. So I purchase this product and I receive it. Inside the box isn't the model I ordered but a "clone" version of the same model. It probably runs at nearly the same speed and no one is going to notice the difference but it isn't the same product. This product they shipped me sells for 20 dollars less at other stores but can "pose" as the retail version which sells for 20 dollars more. If you're not an expert on video cards then you're probably not going to be able to tell the difference. They even e-mailed me saying I was wrong about the product and their last e-mail to me said that they shipped me what I had ordered. After several lengthly e-mails and phone calls that only reached an answering machine, they finally gave in and decided to give me a full refund and not charge me the 15% restocking fee. The next day however, they decided to remove the "false" pin number off their website and left it blank. This way they could still end up selling this product the same way and if you don't read closely enough then they won't have to issue you a full refund.

What did I do in response to this? I got mad and decided to try and flame the company on PriceGrabber. What I was doing was legal and allowed. You're allowed to make ONE comment about a company regarding your purchase on that website. I felt the companies rating on that website was incorrect so I decided to write two posts to balance it out. I opened two e-mail accounts, registered two separate accounts, and wrote two replies on the company and my experience with them. Guess what? None of the replies were put on the PriceGrabber website because PriceGrabber assumed they were fake because they came from the same computer. One of my posts was real and I was actually describing my experience with them. I just felt this company deserved two bad posts instead of one due to the way they handled my order. They deserved 10 bad posts because what they did was intentional to drive customers into their website by offering a product that many people search for at a low, low price. PriceGrabber on the other hand has to default to playing it safe and protecting their merchants against others who may just be out there to harm their competitors. So instead of just posting one of my complaints, they posted 0 of my complaints after reviewing them. They probably assumed I came from another rival company and was trying to hurt this company. Who else would have that incentive?

In response to being off topic? I have never been off topic. I wrote one sentence about thinking there was a fake poster on this board. How is this off topic? This is the topic the fake poster replied to, so shouldn't I make that small remark in here as well? Should I open a new topic in the main board about "BEWARE OF FAKE POSTERS". Would that make you happy? This is obviously the only topic I can reply to, since this is where it originated.

In response to this:

Guess nobody has an answer to this. Thank goodness UltraEdit is better than TextPad and I hate saying that, but it's damned true. I'll come back to TP when it grows up.

I wrote this:

I personally think these slow Textpad posts come from the same person and is trying to hurt Textpad sales or users.

You make one less sale than you normally would make and that automatically means your sales were hurt. I made a statement about a fake poster that you will see happen on almost every message board. If anything, you should have already complained about this persons maturity rather than complain about me proposing a possibility.

For the love of God I do not understand why anyone would edit a file larger than 1mb. Some people may have this need but it probably is very rare and if your editing huge files then you may need to learn how to separate them into smaller ones to make them more managable. However, if you want me to posts more results then I did try another thing which you may also want to try.

I have a ZIP file with 5000 images in them (BMP). The file is 124 megabytes. Fairly large. No one in their right mind has the need to open this file with a text editor to edit it. The market for this function is absolutely 0. Adding a function that would do this to your editor would obviously decrease the amount of users who use this product because it doesn't make sense. It would just clutter the menus. However to test out the speed I decided to open it with Textpad and also with UltraEdit. Once again Textpad opened this ZIP file in less than a second, whereas UltraEdit took around 5 or 6 seconds. UltraEdit also had problems scrolling through the buffer and had momentary delays in showing the lines. Textpad once again scrolled through it as if it was 100 bytes. This is on my average computer and may not be the same on yours. I wrote that in all of my posts.

UltraEdit is a good editor and has some functions that Textpad does not include which is why UE is also on my computer. But it's used primarily as a backup editor and will see fairly little use since the things I require of them are not going to be very often. A backup editor is something that you would run on less than 5% of your files. A primary editor is something you use on more than 95% of your files. For others, UE could have everything you need to cover all 100% of your needs (I only state this in response to the messages I've seen and the way they prop up UE). However if 95% of your files run faster and better on one program, then in the long haul you'll save a lot more time and money using Textpad. Sounds like a sales pitch but I am just offering your my opinion.

Back to the original subject of this forum:"Why does TextPad Open Large Files So Slowly?"

See my response of May 6, 2003 in the Subject "Large files open SLOWLY"

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I agree there should only be one subject for this issue. How do we kill the others? May I suggest we stop entries here and put all future entries in the Subject "Large files open SLOWLY". I chose that one because it already has the higher number of views.

Just a suggestion. If you agree, do not add another message to this subject, but move to "Large files open SLOWLY". Let this be the last message here. It's been interesting.