I try these days to take most things in life just a tad less seriously than I used too, and of course the forum is no exception. Illness / Injury along with thinking through the reality that I'm only here for a short time and then when I'm gone, I'm gone, has contributed a lot to the way I view things today. In spite of some physical impairment, I am fortunate enough that I can still function and do most of what I want to do. So.. I choose to try to enjoy myself and take things a bit lighter as much as possible on a daily basis.

The botoom line here, I don't get upset very often any more no matter what I read herre or anywhere else. In fact, this forum has been a wealth of information to me and has really helped me to "see" and learn about instruments and so many other things musical that I might not otherwise be able to learn much about.

Even though it sways from the topic, I want to make a comment on what James said. I don't feel quite as strong about it as you do James, but.. I have similar thoughts about 2 of the big 3 ( I know little about the current crop of Roland products or their service ) . While my experience has been that Korg has done a bit more for their arranger customers by offering free extra styles along with devoting a company website to the PA80 series with extra wares for the PA series and with links to other goodies, Yamaha aranger users themselves have provided an extraordinary amount of additional resources for Yamaha arrangers. I agree too about not caring for the secretive nature, not discussing any future plans / designs, etc, but I guess these companies reserve the right to do that and probably with some valid reasons in their way of thinking. More often though, I'm drawn to the smaller software producers, like Joe Maas with OMB and Richard Grant and David Castles of Soundtrek ( Jammer Pro ). You can converse with these folks easily and they regularly participate in discussions with users, and very often they take the suggestions of these users and implement them in later releases. It isn't so easy with Yamaha or Korg.. more like pulling teeth, but this is the way it seems to be in any field when dealing with larger outfits..

There are a lot of good reasons I can think of ( from everyone's point of view.. including Yamaha , Korg.. etc ) as to why this is the case, but it's fodder for another thread.

AJ