Lenovo, CDW Get Kudos From Readers

When readers suggested that I balance our "Worst Vendor of 2006" poll by asking for nominations for a Best Vendor of the year, I must admit I had my doubts that such an exercise would prove very useful. After all, this is the Gripe Line, and my readers are not all that attuned to saying nice things about vendors. But it turns out to have been quite an enlightening experience, not just for who won, but for all th

A number of the big vendors who were also on our Worst Lender list -- Apple, Dell, HP, Microsoft, and Verizon - received a few votes. Hey, you can't unplease all the people all the time. And a number of other well-known vendors received their share of endorsements, such as Amazon, APC, Bellsouth, Brother, Canon, Citrix, Comcast, Gibson Research, Grisoft, Logitech, Sprint, Ubuntu, Western Digital, and Zone Labs. But it was the vendors and products that you might not have heard of that really made the Best Vendors idea worthwhile. Here's just a sampling of some of the nominations I received from readers:

Thornsoft: "Sometimes you come across a vendor that is so great you just want them to be even more successful ... and hope it won't go to their head! I've been using a product called Clipmate from Thornsoft for three years and not only is the product stellar, it just keeps better and better. It keeps a record of all your cuts or clips in programs like Word or images from photoediting programs. Your clipboard info is put into a tiny database so that you don't lose that clip after you paste it and cut something new. I don't know how I limped along without it for years. The few times I've had to interact with them for a technical question, they responded quickly and thoroughly. Also, I suggested that they add drag and drop to the product and they did! They were working on it and listening to customers (what a concept!) and they implemented it in the next release. I buy this product for friends as a gift. I really love dealing with the company and I wish more companies would learn from their behavior."

IDM Computer Solutions: "IDM's Ultraedit is easily the best programmer's editor I've ever used, probably the best shareware application ever released, and on top of that IDM backs it up with the most complete after sales service I've ever seen. Every question is answered by a real American-speaking person and most emails are answered by the president of the company in person. Back in UE version 9 I posted a feature want-list item, and this year integrated Telnet was incorporated into the product. Sure -- it was probably more than just my request, but go ahead and suggest a useful feature to any other software producer! Good luck with that."