FHardware-wise, the consoles are as well-built and well-supported as any other
ETC console.
Software is another topic. The complexity and depth of what you can do with the
console is both what makes it powerful and what makes it vulnerable. The Congo software is more prone to bugs because it is incredibly difficult to test all of the potential ways in which different users will use the consoles. The software may be fine for 99% of users, but then there may be that one
programmer who's using their
console differently than everyone else and runs into a
bug that nobody else has seen.
In my experience, phone support for Congo is hit or miss. During the daytime, there's always someone around who can talk you through a Congo-specific problem. During the nighttime and on weekends, sometimes the Tech Services person who takes the 24/7 pager is a Congo expert and other times it's someone with a more basic understanding of the
console. Last I heard,
ETC was working to remedy this, though I cannot speak to whether or not that has happened or if it is sufficient. I just know that when I have had to
call in the past, sometimes I've gotten someone who was able to help and other times I've been lead down a rabbit hole.
Somehow, someway, we've ended up with a
bubble of Congo consoles locally. When the
venue I work with got one in 2008, nobody in our region had a Congo but us. Since then, nearby there are at least two additional schools and a roadhouse running Congo-series consoles. Experience varies. The schools know enough to turn channels on and record presets, though more than once they've called me panicked looking for an experienced
programmer.
The
venue I work with doubles as a roadhouse and as a school facility. The touring groups needing to use our
console haven't seemed to mind. We almost always supply a
programmer, and when we don't, we
throw whatever the group needs on the masters and they run their show manually. I had one LD who loved that approach. He told me "Make it act like a Hog" and I set the masters up like a Hog and he was ecstatic.
We did have one LD recently who, despite our supplied
programmer(a high school student I trained), insisted on bringing in an
Ion. Aside from that he unnecessarily billed his show for that
console rental and infuriated the director, he was slower programming on his
Ion than the high schooler would've been on the Congo. A fact that became more and more painfully apparent each additional night of tech rehearsals that week.
Something I hear a lot of complaints from people about is the
RPN syntax. My response is that if you're using the
console in its most efficient manner, you should be manually keying in as little as is possible. Direct selects and master keys are your friend. Also the Next/Last/Highlight functions. Anyone who can't get past the
RPN is doing it wrong (
IMO). Having seen and been subject to them several times, I think a lot of demos and training sessions that could've sold Congo consoles didn't because they emphasized syntax over the other salient features of the
console. If the syntax is the only thing you learn, you'll have a miserable experience on that
console. If you learn about the more streamlined programming techniques (some of which you have to discover for yourself as to what works best for you), the syntax will become irrelevant to you.
Say what you want to about the learning curve, the syntax, or the complexity of the
console, an experienced Congo
programmer is a force to be reckoned with.