New Version of Weather Defender is out

[ROLLTIDE]

The newest version of Weather Defender is now available for download. This new version contains dozens of new features designed to provide advance notice of severe weather and allow for critical preparation time.

Some of the enhancements include:

• New activity-specific weather maps, including: summer and winter weather, aviation, marine, forestry, amateur radio, and high-contrast maps
• Dozens of new alert conditions, including: tornadoes, lightning, large hail, high winds, heavy precipitation, and more.
• Drawing tool enhancements including the ability to add points by latitude/longitude or street address.
• Increased alert range on Lightning Strikes (up to 50 miles in commercial edition).
• Increased warning time on Severe Storm tracks (up to 3 hours in commercial edition).
• Better support for GIS integration with industry-leading formats like ArcView Shapefile and Google Earth (KML).

Addition features, screenshots and more are available on our new website: www.weatherdefender.com


Existing Customers Upgrade Free!
If you are an existing SWIFT WX or Weather Defender subscriber, this is a free upgrade. Just follow these instructions:

1. Visit the "My Account" page of the website:
   http://www.weatherdefender.com/account/user
2. Log in with your Username and Password
3. Download and install the update from the Available Downloads section (latest version is 1.1.0.3).
4. Done!

Try it again for the first time
We have reset all trials, so if you have tried Weather Defender in the past and would like another 7-day free trial, you may do so by following these instructions:

1. Visit the "Retrial Request" page of the website:
   http://www.weatherdefender.com/account/user/retrial.aspx
2. Log in with your old Username and Password (you can have these emailed to you if you forgot)
3. Fill in any missing information on your account profile, and click Submit
4. You will receive download instructions by e-mail.

4848 S 120th St #300, Omaha, NE 68137

[ROLLTIDE]

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[ocala]

Have you tried it Roll?
I wasn't too impressed with the first version.

[abebush]

I was one of the charter members of Weather Defender last March. I ended up cancelling my membership because it rendered EXTREMELY slow. It was kind of neat for the first day or so, but more as a novelty or toy than as a useful weather tool because of being so incredibly slow.

At the time, they were offering charter members a one-time price of $12.50 per month. But I still cancelled, because the application ran so incredibly slow.

I run StormLAB Pro version 4.0.11 which I purchased a couple years ago, and I also subscribe to Allison House data feeds (Storm Hunter, which I pay $25.00 per month for), and I love them both. I don't currently use GR3, but I love it though and may end up getting GR3 this spring because I love the smoothed radar, which StormLAB does not offer (they state it's intentional, because their claim is that smoothing distorts the data).

I have subscribed to WeatherTAP for over 10 years, and I pay $6.95 per month which is well worth the cost to me.

I got an email invite yesterday, inviting me to come back to Weather Defender, and that they have reset all the 7 day free trial versions. So I re-downloaded it, activated the 7 day trial, and found that many of the features like the storm perimeter feature is not available on the trial version. So I went to "unlock" my trial version by upgrading to the full version.

And I was completely shocked at the cost!!!!!

Weather Defender charges a $249.95 "activation fee", which they will reduce down to "only" $149.95 if you upgrade during the 7 day trial period. But after the trial period, the activation fee goes up to $249.95. Then, it's $29.95 per month. This is for normal, non-commercial retail customers like myself.

My question is this: Am I completely crazy, or are they charging an exorbitant amount of money to use their program?

I emailed their billing support, with my two cents worth, stating that they are grossly overcharging people to use their program! I also went to their website to provide feedback, and also told them how WeatherTAP offers the same products (including email and text alerts, but NOT including perimeter alerts however) for $7.95 per month and no activation fee. I also told them how my most expensive credit card only charges me an annual fee of $50.00...which I might add is actually excessive. So they are charging three times the cost of my most expensive credit card's annual fee, and that is only if I pay during the 7 day trial period. If I wait until the trial period is over, they will be charging way more!

Just curious what others think about this, and if anyone is willing to pay that kind of money?

I for one am not. I don't consider myself stingy or even frugal. But I am *not* willing to pay an activation fee like that, on top of $29.95 per month!

Especially since I noticed that the maps still render just as slowly as they did back in April when I cancelled last time.

Abe

[ocala]

Abe, myself and a few others are right with you.
That is completely ridiculous. To charge that kind of money for something you can get for free is crazy.
Roy is pricing himself right out of the weather enthusiast's market. I can't imagine anyone paying that kind of dough for that product.
Apparently his target market is municipalities and government agencies because they are the only ones foolish enough to buy it.
It's too bad. I had really hoped when it was released that it would rival GR3 and Stormlab.
Fact is it didn't even come close.

[abebush]

Thanks for your reply Ocala, and I'm sure glad to hear that I'm not just being a tight-wad.

My recommendation is that people email WeatherDefender and let them know too if you agree with me that pricing is way too expensive. Maybe if they get enough people telling them their pricing is way too high, they will come down in price. But to be honest, they will need to eliminate that ridiculous "activation fee" altogether, and charge a much more reasonable monthly fee. I could see maybe $10.00 per month at the most. But like I said, WeatherTAP only charges $7.95 per month (they recently raised their price by $1.00 per month. I've been a member of WeatherTAP for over 10 years now, and until just recently I've been paying $6.95 per month the entire 10 years I was a member).

I know that GR3 gives you a full 21 day trial, and then after you purchase the software you don't pay one dime (unless you choose to integrate a data feed like Allisonhouse but that is certainly not necessary).

My final point, and then I'll get off my soap box on this for now, is that Weather Defender keeps bragging about how their mission is to protect your family from severe weather, to keep you and your family safe, and to provide early warnings from severe weather and protect lives and property with their products. But honestly, how is the average family in this economy with unemployment as high as it is going to be able to afford to pay a $249.95 activation fee and then $29.95 per month on top of that for a weather application? You can buy a good NOAA All Hazards Radio for like $35.00. Heck, nowadays most local media outlets provide free email and some provide free text/cell phone alerts for severe weather warnings. WeatherTAP provides these alerts free, up to 10 cell phone numbers or email addresses with your monthly membership (which costs $7.95 per month).

Some local NWS forecast offices even offer these services now, much to the chagrin of some companies in the private sector, who have tried to get the NWS to stop offering these services because they claim the NWS is "competing" with them. Even though the NWS is who provides them with their data!!!!

My point is that Weather Defender seems to have gotten very greedy, VERY FAST.

I am all for a company wanting and needing to make a profit, of course I am! We all need to pay the bills, keep the kids clothed and fed, not to mention be able to afford to buy what we want and need. But for crying out loud, do you think Wal Mart would have gotten as huge as they have become if they would have charged 5 times higher prices than everyone else?

It's one thing to charge fair and reasonable prices, and quite another to sock it to folks, and try to yank their money from them and run to the bank laughing which I'm sorry, but I feel like that's what Weather Defender has done.

What if there is a family or an individual who truly wants the product to feel safe, not someone like me who just wanted yet another weather toy. Not that I really think Weather Defender could ever actually save peoples' lives (if you're so oblivious to the weather to not pay attention to watches and warnings why would you be glued in front of your computer watching your Weather Defender or setting up the alerts to your cell phone). If they really think their mission is to save lives and property, maybe they should consider charging prices that the average person could actually afford!

(I'm now off my rant but I'm hoping others will reply with their thoughts...and feel free to write to Weather Defender like I did and let them know what you think of their pricing structure).

Abe

[ROLLTIDE]

Let's not forget about the extra charge of $200 just for Hurricane graphics. This program is no longer for chasers

[abebush]

I didn't even know about the $200 charge for hurricane graphics Roll. So there is an activation fee of $249.95 (for home non-commercial users), $29.95 per month, and $200.00 for hurricane graphics. Incredible!

Rory Groves, SwiftWX/Weather Defender founder and CEO was interviewed on a radio show and the interview is on Weather Defender's company blog at http://www.weatherdefender.com/blog/ . But in the interview, Rory basically slams the National Weather Service, and states "...the thing you have to realize about tornado warnings, severe thunderstorm warnings, those are government issued warnings. A warning is not issued until the storm has already reached severe limits. For example, a tornado often times is not warned until it has already touched down. I would put it into this perceptive: If there was a predator loose in your neighborhood, would you wait until that predator was at your front door before you did anything about it? Weather Defender, what it does is it tells you what's coming LONG before it ever gets there. When the first lightning bolt strikes, when the first hail pellet drops, LONG before it reaches severe limits."

So basically, he slams the National Weather Service and falsely accuses them of negligence and incompetence, stating they often times don't issue warnings until the tornado is already on the ground, and compares the NWS warning decision process to a predator being in the neighborhood, and waiting until he's at your front door before you do anything about it. No mention of the NWS hazardous weather outlook, short term forecasts, special weather statements, which are available to everyone for free, any time, any place. Not to mention the thousands of other sources of weather information that are available for free, or at a fraction of the cost of Weather Defender.

The target audience for Weather Defender appears to no longer be storm chasers or weather enthusiasts, but instead clueless people who are in desperate need of protection not only from so-called "predatory weather", but also in need of protection from the incompentent and often-times late issued NWS weather warnings or non-functioning air raid sirens.

In Weather Defender's world, everyone is clueless about the weather, no one has a NOAA All Hazards Radio, we don't tune to our favorite media outlet for weather information, we can't get the same exact weather information from other sources for a fraction of the cost (or for free), but instead we need to invest hundreds of dollars into this extremely slow software to keep us safe from predatory weather. I think not.

Rory Groves claims over and over again that their only mission at Weather Defender is to keep people safe from predatory weather and to save lives. I think that's a big lie: their only mission is to make big bucks off their bloated, slow-running and outrageously expensive software.

Abe

[Deinonychus]

I will not pay $249.95 or $149.95 it's not worth it, and I also had the free trial and it was too slow. Weather defender is not for me.

[aniwack]

These guys are selling to the government. Hmm, I can't imagine why they would charge soooo much for their crap. It's nothing but a glorified version of Barons.

[swilson]

I love the layout of WD and how it works. However, it's got a long road ahead of it to become truly usable in my book. It's sluggish and as others said over priced. I really like the whole national map stuff though.

[Deinonychus]

Perhaps the owner of WD should read this thread and makes some changes.....It's very sluggish and I will not pay a setup fee or a monthly fee when I can pay a one time payment for the same info. If I wanted to pay a monthly fee it would be for radarlab HD. Which is much better than WD anyway...........These are my thoughts about WD.

[ROLLTIDE]

It's our biggest sale ever.. Buy 30-days access to Weather Defender for just $1.00!
That's over $120 savings off the regular price.
Click Here for Details & Ordering
** Offer expires Monday, August 2nd **
Don't miss out on this incredibly opportunity and incredible features:

• 24/7, 360-degree Weather Tracking
• Real-time Weather Graphics
• Mobile Weather Alerts

Customize your map with over 60 Weather Data options:

• National Weather Radar
• NEXRAD Doppler Radar:
  • Base Reflectivity
  • Base Velocity
  • Storm Relative Velocity
  • Composite Reflectivity
  • Vertically Integrated Liquid
  • Echo Tops
  • 1-Hour Precipitation
  • Storm Total Precipitation
• Winter Weather Radar
• Infrared Satellite (US/4KM)
• Visible Satellite (US/4KM)
• GOES Hi-Res Satellite (1KM)
• Lightning Strikes (150-mi)
• SPC Day 1-3 Outlooks
• SPC Day 1-3 Probabilistics
  • Tornado
  • Hail
  • Wind
• Mesoscale Discussions
• Watch Outlines
• Warning Polygons
• NWS Advisories
• County-filled Watch/Warn
• Storm Attributes:
  • Tornado Vortex Signature
  • Estimated Hail
  • Mesocyclones

• Storm Tracks (1-hour)
• Local Storm Reports:
  • Tornado Sighting
  • Hail Damage
  • Wind Damage
• Temperature
• Dewpoint
• Wind Speeds
• Peak Wind Gusts
• Relative Humidity
• Wind Chill
• Heat Index
• Current Conditions
• Surface Fronts
• Surface Pressure
• METAR Plots
• Wind Vectors
• Cloud Cover
• Visibility
• Visual Flight Rules
• Ceiling
• Cell Tops & Movement
• Sea Temperature
• Wave Height
• Buoy Stations
• Wildfires
• Earthquakes
• Plus many more!

Buy it all for a Buck:
Click Here for Details & Ordering
** Offer expires Monday, August 2nd **
NO CONTRACTS. Cancel any time.

Best Regards,

Founder/CEO
SWIFT Weather

P.S. After Monday the $99 activation fee will apply and the standard monthly price of $21.95. Be sure to order before Monday to get the lowest price possible.