[macintologist]

http://forum.parallels.com/thread1407.html

Here's the official response from the Parallels admin:

Dear Friends,

We need to provide a good quality of the product itself and its support. Due to a large volume of support requests we removed the links from the site. We think that we should provide the links only to users of the product. It will allow users to asktheir questions and find answers faster.

I can assure you that we'll never close the forum. Everybody will be able to read and post.

Again, our only intention is to make the support better. It must work for you as users of Parallels product.


Regards,
Nick

Here's a great comment made by one of the posters there

MAJOR mistake removing the forum. The Forum IS the reason why I bought 2 copies of the product. Removing the forum to people before they buy the product prevents people from seeing the POSITIVE posts that are all over the forum. PLUS it really helps in the installation and use of the product to have the forums. Plus people can get their questions answered by others almost immediately.

Parallels was starting to create an amazing LOYAL following that I have not seen in practically ANY other new releases of software, ever. In this day and age of social networks and the sense of community really driving the growth of the Internet, I would have to say that yanking that sense of community away from potential purchasers of your product is going to have a REALLY detrimental affect on the growth of your company.

Now you are just a website selling a product. I see no human interaction and no users of the product prior to buying your product. You are a company now that doesn't appear to care about its users. All of those reasons were WHY I bought your product. Now you are a static home page with a couple press releases and a download button.

Just because you are not taking down the forums, but instead are hiding them from potential purchasers, means that those people will not be convinced to buy the product due to your sense of community and the fact that you appear to care about your customers.

You are making a MAJOR mistake.. and you will quickly see the results of your decision very shortly.. I promise you.. I have been in the Internet business since 1994 and I have see alot of companies come and go. This decision is the first really bad decision you guys have made... please change your minds for the sake of the company.. because right now, I am starting to lose my faith in you.

I think the above user expresses my own sentiments perfectly. He is correct in saying that Parallels was developing a very loyal user base of Mac users. A software company would do ANYTHING to develop that kind of loyal user base.

Big mistake on Parallels part.

[mr ginge]

I would disagree and suggest you read Nick's rationale for the move. Purely a matter of time management. Most software companies are not blessed with a staff of hundreds to monitor and respond to questions all day and if you look at their site they have over 100,000 beta testers out there now. That is a lot of USERS to help let alone tire kickers. And I believe they are trying to work on continually improving the product to boot. It all takes TIME.

Of course the easy answer is just buy it and get right back into the forum as a participant. $40 bucks is dirt cheap for something that really opens the door to progress. No need to not continue the momentum of what appears to be a great product.

For the record I am waiting for my new (first ever) Mac to arrive, will buy Parallels as soon as I can and use it to take advantage of some expensive biz software I cannot afford to replace just now. Most of my time I am sure will be spent on the OSX side. As a business user of PC's for years I see this as a real break through that will allow the luddites to experience elegance for the first time without having to totally sever the umbilical.

As an ardent anti MS type for all the time and really having no respect for the PC side (having cut my teeth on an Amiga way back when) I would suggest that there are a lot of peple on the PC side who would love the opportunity to have the superior OSX at their disposal and deal with pragmatism at the same time. Most people I know in the biz world are not exaclty married to MS because they want to be but only of necessity - until now!

[neilw]

I don't get it, why can't they just make the site "read-only" for non-users? Don't see why they'd have to completely hide it...

[ghporter]

Because maybe some of the stuff posted there isn't quite right? Or it works but not the way the programmers want it to? It's got to be more work to hide the forum than to leave it alone, and it's probably more work than just locking it. Give 'em some slack. They're getting innundated and they can't just ignore that sort of stuff.