Help me choose

[QUICKSILVER2002]

This may be a taboo subject, but I figure it is a public forum, so why not.

I’m trying to decide between purchasing EFI-live Flashscan commercial and HP-Tuners.

I’ve been a long time owner of EFI-live scan products and love the quality and support. The only reason that I’m not 100% sure I want to purchase Flashscan is that HP-Tuners seems to already have some key features that I really want (#1 being a custom OS for 2bar support). It also seems that HP-Tuners exposes quite a few more parameters for editing.

I know efi-live is the more refined and elegant product overall, but the raw editing breadth of HP-tuners seems to be a little more advanced right now.

I purchased ls1-edit a few years back when it was the only game in town and I want to make sure I don’t end up spending another $500+ next year on a product that does the same thing as the one I already own.

So here are my questions:

1.Will EFI-Live ever support 2bar SD (without granularity loss)?

2. How quickly will EFI-live be able to add useful parameters/tables that are not currently exposed? I’ve looked through the HP-Tuners help file and the EFI-Live demo mode and it seems that there are quite a few things missing on the efi-live side. Granted many of these are fringe type settings, but what is the reason they are missing? Is it just a matter of more time to reverse engineer the code and see where things are stored and how they are used? Is my observation just invalid?

3. What is the cost/procedure going to be when ls2 support becomes available? I already own an ls2 powered car and would like to know if I can license that PCM now or if I’m going to be shelling out big $s for it when the CAN/ls2 editing support becomes available.

This entire editing software thing is such a “gray” area when it comes to product definition…. Are you buying a product that will allow you to fully edit the PCM or are you buying a product with known limitations. Is it a bug that you can’t edit a table that you really need to modify to make your car run correctly? HP-Tuners seems to be a little bit in the ls1edit camp when it comes to this type of stuff and new releases (which bothers me a bit). What is the plan on releases with flashscan? Is a new table being exposed a new feature/release?


OK, hope I did not offend anyone by posting this here. I’m really a big efi-live fan, I’m just trying to make sure I spend my money a bit smarter this time around. ls1-edit has really left a bad taste in my mouth. It sort of did what I needed, but it never really fully delivered and now I’m about to throw it in the trash. Such a waste.

[Blacky]

Firstly, apologies for not replying sooner - it's been about 5 weeks since your post. I never saw this post until just now.
Secondly, given our lack of response I would not be suprised if you've already made up your mind. Anyway here's the answers...

1. Yes - this month (July).

2. If you know of a table in any other package that EFIlive is lacking, and you let us know about it we can (and do) add that table into EFILive in a matter of days - sometimes in a matter of hours. Because the calibration definitions are stored in external (*.cal) files, all that is required is for us to send you an updated *.cal file for your operating system. We do that free of charge.

Also, EFILive is releasing an updated software package very soon. It contains probably another 100 calibrations over the existing V7.1.2 version. The current count is over 500 calibrations.

3. The cost to upgrade to the new LS2 hardware will only be to cover hardware costs. The new LS2 hardware is more complex than the LS1 hardware and will cost more. Given that we price our current LS1 hardware at $299, the upgrade price will be somewhere above that and below the retail price of EFILive FlashScan V2.

Based on our previous upgrades it will probably be half the retail cost of EFILive FlashScan V2. The Retail cost of FlashScan V2 will probably be slighty higher than the current EFILive FlashScan V1.2 price.

The workshop version will require an upgrade charge for unlimited access to the LS2 calibrations.

Personal and Commercial licenses can not be carried over from the LS1 FlashScan V1.2 hardware to the LS2 FlashScan V2 hardware. You will need to purchase a license for your LS2 *after* you have purchased the FlashScan V2 upgrade.

If you have any further questions (and if you're still deciding on which product to buy) feel free to send me a pm to discuss anything in more detail.

Regards
Paul

[Scoota]

Hi Paul,
Have you got an estimated costing on the on the LS2 upgrade for the workshop version. "We do need to budget for these things". I just have to get the timing right for when I sit the minister for war and finance down.
I also remember reading a thread stating that the LS2 software will most likely be ready by the end of the year.
Is that still the case?

Cheers, Scotty.

[GMPX]

Paul, what's up with the forum, I can't believe we both missed this post?.

Cheers,
Ross