In a missive sent out via email yesterday, Epocrates, the budding online and PDA-based physician and healthcare provider formulary software ISV, asks users not to install Vista due to installation or synchronization problems with Vista.

Are you freakin' kiddin' me?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't these yum-yums see Vista approaching?

Then they send out a memo 2 weeks after the public release of Vista?

It took the fu*kers 2 weeks after public release! And nearly 3 months from RTM!

You can imagine how pissed I was, getting a number of calls from physician clients whose practices are slated for upgrading to Vista asking me to explain the memo to them. (After all, they are just doctors, speaking or writing English is foreign to them!)

Looking into my own Epocrates account - got to stay abreast as well - I found the email, and flipped.

I asked all of them a simple question: since when have I been notifying them about Vista; inventoried their hardware and software for Vista, and generally prepped them about the advent of Vista?

Since January 2005, that is when!

So, what is the value of a company that makes a widely-used program cannot either engage Microsoft at a level that would produce dividends for them, or get into the beta test program in order to produce a shim for current programs while developing a Vista-class product?

I am undertaking a personal quest to find a replacement for this product as all credibility they may have had with me, and by proxy, Logikworx or any related companies just went bye-bye with that idiotic email memorandum.

© 2007, John Obeto II for SmallBizVista.com^®