AKA vs. WAS

[SlartyBartFast]

Over on PBN in the AKA forum, AKA is asking AKA owners who've purchased a WAS board to tell them why.

Anyone care to say? What problems did WAS the WAS board solve?

Or, is it a classic example of paintball players dropping hundreds of dollars for hype and the ability to twiddle with settings?

[cledford]

Well, mine (the second one) came with a WAS, but my first Viking had a Nelson - so I'm in a perfect position to comment. I also own the Equalink and had a WAS Timmy board also.

The Nelson board plain outright sucked and AKA really drug their reputation through the dirt with that whole mess. (IMHO) The boards are known to go "dumb", losing their firmware and cannot be fixed. Their own master techs (AKA) openly admit that it is not a question of whether the boards will die, just when. Keep in mind that this was a second generation of the boards - I'm not sure who produced the first but if it was the same company that is even worse. The management software (which took over a year of broken promises to appear) sucked bad and only ran on none "NT" (anything other than NT, 2000, or XP) operating systems. It was so pathetic it was bordering on a crime that AKA would even distribute such Mickey Mouse crap. (For the record I've used the Racegun, AKA, and WAS software and the AKA was like a half finished school project some computer science drop-out failed to finish - while the others are awesome...) All in all I fault AKA severely for entering into a partnership such an obviously unprofessional electronics firm to make the "brains" of their product. Also, especially with this known issue I think they've left their older owners out in the cold. The will not warranty the board at all and now point the owners to a rinky-dink website for the company that was producing the board - leaving the owner with a dead marker to work the situation out on their own. Although AKA's original warranty did not accept any responsibility for the boards, I think that given the known issues with the component that THEY contracted out, they owe to people who stood by them to take care of the issue that their (poorly advised) business decision created. Frankly, if I were a Nelson owner, I'd be pissed. Furthermore, the Nelson may have accepted, but never had a working eye system. It certainly had nowhere close to the level of configurability of the WAS. Also, if it is your "thing" the WAS can be dialed in to "bounce", which is something you could never do with the Nelson. I don't advocate this for play (I call it cheating) but it is useful for testing.

AS far as actual performance, I can't tell much difference, and my old Nelson was capped at 13bps! I remember that most people over a year ago thought it was ungodly fast with the Nelson at 13, yet they say the same about the WAS set at 20. I did turn my Nelson up to 18 (using the crappy software- I actually had to have a second laptop running Windows 98 just to run the software...) but never played a game with the marker.

For all that can be said bad about Jim Drew (and I've said a lot of it) he puts out a decent product from what I can tell. I have more confidence in his board and love the fact that it can be programmed both via software and trigger. I can say for certain that I would have never bought a second Viking had they not dumped the Nelson boards for the WAS. All in all the Equalizer is a MUCH better product.

One thing to keep in mind is that the WAS cable is $49 bucks. I remember the AKA being cheaper. I bought mine used for $15, and I know they made newer ones, but don't remember them being as much as the WAS.

-Calvin

[SlartyBartFast]

Thanks for the reply. Certainly sounds like issues AKA should have resolved themselves.

But seeing as they are now asking I would guess they're looking to change.

[magmonkey]

the post on pbnation is aka trying to start to resolve the problems created in the past

[afrankart]

I would guess they're not looking to change from WAS.