sybex publication

[jow104]

I purchased a sybex publication for my flight sim 2002 program.
However the flight excercise I used did not confiorm with FS2002.
Sybex replied quite curtly that its not their fauld if Microsoft change their software and cause a sybex book to be out of date or obsolete.

Does this problem also occur with the railway software . Perhaps other forum menmbers would quote their experience.
Dont you think that sybex shoud offer a Patch for download on the web to correct these sort of problems with their publications?

engine mad

[saddletank]

Firstly, were Sybex correct? Had FS2002 been patched so that the flight you took was no longer the same as it was when you bought the game (and which apparently Sybex testers flew when they wrote their guide)?

If you reinstall the game without any patches, is the Sybex guide then correct?

If the game has not been patched then I suggest you inform Sybex of this and ask them why their guide does not match an unpatched game.

If it has been patched then I have to agree with Sybex, it would be a colossal business expense for them to keep up to speed with the patch-life of every game they write a guide for and offer downloadable additional material. The internet market is only some 5% of games sold so most Sybex guide owners buy theirs via a shop and presumably don't patch the game and therefore a printed followup set of corrections would only confuse/be irrelevant to most users.

And lastly most Sybex guides probably have a very short shelf-life, they would tend to sell just as the game comes out and after a few months are probably hardly bought at all, so interest in updates would be minimal.

[jow104]

Amazon whom I purchased the publication from have agreed to give me a refund without question They do seem sympathetic to the problem.
The FS2002 software has not been patched and I assume sybex wrote their book using a beta program or some other source because the ATC does not conform to the route used by the sybex book.

But my point in bringing this to forum attention is that a publisher has excellent facilities to correct problems with publications by creating a web site with corrections.
John engine mad

[mikesimpson]

I think you will find this is a Sybex trait, they try to bring out books at the same time as new programs (they had an early effort with MSTS which was very basic), and to do so must base their work on beta copies.

On the other hand, Michael vone's Guide to Route Building by Abacus was brought out as an electronic book once MSTS had been released, and being in the electronic format could be updated fairly quickly.

I have in the past bought several Visual Basic programming guides with the same problems, commands working differently to the book etc.