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So I just signed up for the free trial for Firecracker and like what I see so far. But how the hell do I work this thing...

The interface seems really simple but I can't "bank" cards. Or even find flashcards for that matter.

Is the "banking" feature only for subscribers?

Where are the flashcards? - because all I see when I click on the topics is drop-down windows and the ability to create quizzes. I thought I would get the ability to see flashcards and rate them based on the confidence of my answer (that whole spatial learning thing)...

Is the free version just a taste, and I will receive the full features upon subscribing?

I swear I am not stupid.
 
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non trad said:
Two more ideas for improvement:

1. Give us the option to not have any Qbank-style, multiple-choice questions in the daily review or banking/flagging quiz. As others have said, they slow things down and there's little value in seeing them more than once.

Qbank-style questions aren't useless, but I'd rather save them for exam simulations and there are better ways to integrate them with the spaced repetition. For example, the site could put together a simulated exam based on topics that we've reached a reasonable mastery level in (because basic recall comes before integrative reasoning.) Then performance on the Qbank questions could be fed back into the daily review schedule for related cards.

2. Give users more control over when questions appear. Adaptive repetition is great, but the algorithm doesn't know whether I'm taking Step 1 next week or in two years. I often get questions in GT where even pressing "5" means the question will show up again in just a few days, and the only way to delay that is the "customize" slider (awkward in GT, missing altogether in FC.) How about user-definable shortcut keys that override the algorithm so that (for example), I could set "6" to mean 90 days or "0" to mean today?
Click to expand...

GREAT ideas. We completely agree with you because our core belief -- above all else -- is that learners need complete control over what, when, and how they learn. This was a core motivation behind our switch to Firecracker; getting our tech in a place such that we could quickly iterate to give you guys more control over when, what, and how you study. Completely 110% agree with you guys and, if you look back at a lot of what is being said, requests for more control have been very consistent. It killed us that we couldn't make a lot of these changes in GT simply because the way it was built was not flexible at all. It's hard to see but FC is completely flexible under the hood so rest assured that giving you guys complete control over your learning is our top priority and our core belief. Thanks again for all the great feedback and continued support.
 
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Lazybastard said:
So I just signed up for the free trial for Firecracker and like what I see so far. But how the hell do I work this thing...

The interface seems really simple but I can't "bank" cards. Or even find flashcards for that matter.

Is the "banking" feature only for subscribers?

Where are the flashcards? - because all I see when I click on the topics is drop-down windows and the ability to create quizzes. I thought I would get the ability to see flashcards and rate them based on the confidence of my answer (that whole spatial learning thing)...

Is the free version just a taste, and I will receive the full features upon subscribing?

I swear I am not stupid.
Click to expand...

Hi! You're not stupid at all; it's just not that clear. We're going to put a video together for you guys but in the meantime, check out my post on flagging above (2-3 posts ago) and go ahead and do the study questions that resulted from your flagging. Then you will see what some people liken to flashcards (question and then answer). Then rate your recall and we will schedule questions for you in the future! Although you can flag a topic right away without viewing it, we recommend that people view the topic first and then flag it (the flag is in the upper right hand corner of the topic page). This way you review the content at least once before you go into what you're describing as flashcard mode.
 
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SeanatFC said:
No, not a trolling GT user. I'm the editor-in-chief of the USMLE division. We are working really hard to make our review questions better and we always appreciate your feedback. We want to help you study more efficiently, so I will definitely address this issue with our team. Thanks!
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Ok - excuse my frankness 🙂 It's just an issue that's been discussed a significant bit in the thread as a complaint that several people have had.

I'll propose what I think would be a very streamlined, easy-to-implement way of correcting the huge number of questions such that they're better for spaced repetition.

I'm sure you all keep track of user statistics. I would identify the %banked obtained where the vast majority of users that reach that %banked go on to reach 100% banked (or 95% banked, whatever, something near the top). Make an offer to them open to the first "x" number of them that respond (probably wouldn't need more than 20-25) for a "free" 2 year subscription to GT (or something along those lines). In return, the users flag questions that aren't optimal and type in a quick comment about how to fix the question so that it is. Under the "feedback" option you could code for a special button open only to those selected users, so that their feedback can be sent to one of your staff who will review and change the questions (after a certain number of comments have been registered on any one question). Or maybe there's just a way you could code it that certain user name's comments are flagged for feedback to be sent to a unique folder.

Within a few months, that should optimize things with fairly negligible effort or cost on your end. If lazy users became an issue, you could just run a stats analysis, see if a user's "% flagged" or some such was an outlier and drop them from the program.

Edit: also, if you GT/firecracker employees get in touch with Lee or one of the administrators for SDN, you can probably get little badges under your icons to verify your affiliation with GT - would probably be a "product sponsor" or some such badge
 
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ok so:

1. my daily questions aren't out-of-control right now and I currently dont want to take any vacation days. What other advantages does migrating to FC currently offer me, exactly..? I'm not sure whether I want to migrate at all (or if I did, whether I would just revert it to GT mode)

2. i fully understand banking cards. what, if any, is the difference between banking a card and flagging a topic? So far, the only difference I have been able to elucidate from the given explanation is that you can simply unflag a topic if you feel you have achieved a "5+ perfect recall never show me this question again"-level mastery of a topic.
 
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cage92 said:
what is the difference beetwen gt and fircraker?
Click to expand...

Suncrusher said:
ok so:

1. my daily questions aren't out-of-control right now and I currently dont want to take any vacation days. What other advantages does migrating to FC currently offer me, exactly..? I'm not sure whether I want to migrate at all (or if I did, whether I would just revert it to GT mode)

2. i fully understand banking cards. what, if any, is the difference between banking a card and flagging a topic? So far, the only difference I have been able to elucidate from the given explanation is that you can simply unflag a topic if you feel you have achieved a "5+ perfect recall never show me this question again"-level mastery of a topic.
Click to expand...

Hey Guys! Does this blog post help? Take a look then let me know if you have any questions: http://blog.firecracker.me/migrate-your-gt-account-in-one-click/

Thanks!
 
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Yes, that did explain things. I've decided I'm not going to migrate until after I take Step I this April...or if I do migrate (I'm assuming future updates and content error-fixing will occur only for FC), I will revert to GT-mode immediately. That option is still on the table, right? If so, then I'm happy.
 
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Hey everyone! My name is Nick and I work at Firecracker. I just got myself an account on SDN so you can call me out on anything, ask me a question, vent at me, tell me you love me, tell me you hate me, anything. I'm going for two tin cans and a wire connecting you and me for always ;-) So if you ever hear crickets, hit me up at [email protected].

So migration... We made the mistake of inviting everyone to use FC and migrate accounts at the same time. The larger migrations are pretty huge and they exposed some issues we were having with our servers and with some of our code. So that's good and bad. Good because if we can see it we can fix it. Bad because we invited you guys to migrate then we dropped the ball on a bunch of you.

So here's the skinny. We've got the servers runnings super fast and have fixed the majority of the bugs that people were seeing. The rest of the little arthropods will be stamped out soon. As for migrations, they're temporarily on hold until while we finish building a faster system that doesn't take forty years to run. We're well on our way to having this done, but we want to make sure that when we turn migrations back on we don't slow down the app for everyone else. This is actually my favorite thing to do, make things fast, so if you ever see anything slow drop me a line and tell me to get to work.

More news soon. Holler if you need me ;-)
 
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Nick Mertaugh said:
Hey everyone! My name is Nick and I work at Firecracker. I just got myself an account on SDN so you can call me out on anything, ask me a question, vent at me, tell me you love me, tell me you hate me, anything. I'm going for two tin cans and a wire connecting you and me for always ;-) So if you ever hear crickets, hit me up at [email protected].

So migration... We made the mistake of inviting everyone to use FC and migrate accounts at the same time. The larger migrations are pretty huge and they exposed some issues we were having with our servers and with some of our code. So that's good and bad. Good because if we can see it we can fix it. Bad because we invited you guys to migrate then we dropped the ball on a bunch of you.

So here's the skinny. We've got the servers runnings super fast and have fixed the majority of the bugs that people were seeing. The rest of the little arthropods will be stamped out soon. As for migrations, they're temporarily on hold until while we finish building a faster system that doesn't take forty years to run. We're well on our way to having this done, but we want to make sure that when we turn migrations back on we don't slow down the app for everyone else. This is actually my favorite thing to do, make things fast, so if you ever see anything slow drop me a line and tell me to get to work.

More news soon. Holler if you need me ;-)
Click to expand...

Will there be an option to "re-migrate" for those of us who had to switch back to GT after migration (due to server problems)? I've banked more cards in GT since I migrated, and I would like to use FC at some point.
 
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Oh yes indeed is what I say to that. We'll always take care of you, you have my word on that. So yes to re-syncing with GT, and we'll look at how else we can compensate you guys for any tension headaches we've had a hand in this past week.
 
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Here's a question I haven't seen her before - for those who have completed GT in full -

Did you still have to make a few passes through First Aid to memorize yet more details, or did you feel that you already had First Aid down as much as was necessary?
 
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SeanatFC said:
Hi Stephen, Thanks for your feedback. Actually we mix in some questions with somewhat unusual question stems because on the real USMLE exam you will see very long questions that often times will be UNRELATED to the eventual question itself. For example, they may give you excess background information, vital signs, physical exam findings etc but only ask you a very simple question about a bacterial toxin. So our intention is to help you filter through the less important material quickly. Sean
Click to expand...

It's really great to see you on here giving feedback, I think we all appreciate it.

I really like GT, but I think this is a terrible idea and it is the thing that frustrates me most about using it. I'm using GT to memorize facts, not to practice answering USMLE type questions. Doing the GT questions is a huge time commitment that cuts into time for studying for classes. I really, really just want to bang through my questions and be forced to recall those facts as fast as possible. I'll practice USMLE style questions on my own schedule.

This problem seems to have been getting worse recently, and it is the reason I don't recommend GT to any of my classmates, because it currently seems like you guys are headed in the wrong direction.

P.S. Sorry I called you George Lucas. I'm sure you're actually a very nice guy.
 
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Quick question...if you decide to do all the questions for a subject in GT...i.e.- I wanna do ALL the Path problems before my exam, which will be great for my review. However, in the context of the daily review schedule, will the questions for Path then be postponed accordingly? i.e. say a path question that was going to be asked in a few days, would that question be postponed further because I would be doing it in my comprehensive Path review today?
 
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Can someone clarify the changes that GT/FC has been undergoing that everyone is talking about which cause some people to stop recommending GT? To add onto that, is it still worth it to spend all that time to bank all the flashcards? GT is a huge time commitment but if the questions aren't helping me reinforce facts efficiently then I may have to resort towards another approach. Since there's no other program like GT, I'm hesitant. I'd appreciate any thoughts. Thanks
 
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Take it with a grain of salt. A lot of the comments here come from the same people saying the same thing over and over, in an increasingly louder tone because they know GT is reading. Yes, I see what they're saying, but the way it's being said is just over the top, really. If I were GT, I would send a poll to *all* FC users after a month of use to get an accurate picture.

I personally prefer FC over GT. One of my favorite features is the arrows in the daily review questions which allows you to leave a question, but keep moving forward with the rest of the questions. I have an iPad with internet and I plan to do my questions little by little during gaps in my schedule, and I'll tackle the ones I skipped at the end of my day when I can do the background reading, since I oftentimes need to fill the holes in my learning.



EDIT:
Okay, so this morning I banked several flashcards (okay, "flagged" since now the little flag banks the questions) and I must say I love how accessible it is to annotate and take notes, but it's not in the way. I like to type a few keywords to remind myself things I looked up, to avoid having to look it up again in the future.

Before it was hard to see the notes you took, and they were unavailable in the quiz questions, which meant you had to reload the flashcard, then an extra click to see your notes, but now the system changed!

So I banked questions this morning, and many hours later I'm finally getting to the daily review questions. To my surprise, there's a little notepad icon above the "rate recall" section and your notes are right there in the daily review! No pop up. No need to load the flashcard. Very clean, fast and handy!
 
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Does anyone know if its possible to buy a 6 months sub but hold off on actually using it. I was wondering because I hear the prices will be increasing soon and I don't plan to use FC for Step 2ck until November....
 
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I just started gunner training's free 1 month trial to collaborate with my M1 studying. Should I use the firecracker website or stick with the original GT site?
 
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Transformers said:
Bumpp...can someone please answer my question...thanks
Click to expand...

Can't say for sure, but I don't think it does that since I haven't seen my daily questions go down after doing a targeted review. I would maybe contact GT directly, they're usually pretty good about responding.

Does anyone know if they are still updating cards on GT, say if you report an error?
 
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I... have an account on GT that I'm using currently. However back some time ago I also signed up for the FC trial/beta or whatever stage it was around late July/early August.

I stopped using that account on FC but I logged in today to see what FC was like. Under account details it says "Your membership is on us!"

lolwut

...does that mean?
 
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Signorina said:
Take it with a grain of salt. A lot of the comments here come from the same people saying the same thing over and over, in an increasingly louder tone because they know GT is reading. Yes, I see what they're saying, but the way it's being said is just over the top, really. If I were GT, I would send a poll to *all* FC users after a month of use to get an accurate picture.

I personally prefer FC over GT. One of my favorite features is the arrows in the daily review questions which allows you to leave a question, but keep moving forward with the rest of the questions. I have an iPad with internet and I plan to do my questions little by little during gaps in my schedule, and I'll tackle the ones I skipped at the end of my day when I can do the background reading, since I oftentimes need to fill the holes in my learning.



EDIT:
Okay, so this morning I banked several flashcards (okay, "flagged" since now the little flag banks the questions) and I must say I love how accessible it is to annotate and take notes, but it's not in the way. I like to type a few keywords to remind myself things I looked up, to avoid having to look it up again in the future.

Before it was hard to see the notes you took, and they were unavailable in the quiz questions, which meant you had to reload the flashcard, then an extra click to see your notes, but now the system changed!

So I banked questions this morning, and many hours later I'm finally getting to the daily review questions. To my surprise, there's a little notepad icon above the "rate recall" section and your notes are right there in the daily review! No pop up. No need to load the flashcard. Very clean, fast and handy!
Click to expand...


1) Being able to skip Q's and keep moving forward is AWESOME, thats one feature I always wanted.

2) The ability to see your annotations while doing Q's is the only reason I was using ANKI alongside GT because I didn't want to click and view each flashcard for each Q, that's another HUGE concern of mine addressed.


Now ONE MORE THING: Are we able to add our own Q's into the daily review schedule yet? I have a list of about 100 things I want to review and I would LOVE to be able to add them into my Firecracker schedule, this would make it an all round perfect program for me.
 
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thawunandonly said:
I... have an account on GT that I'm using currently. However back some time ago I also signed up for the FC trial/beta or whatever stage it was around late July/early August.

I stopped using that account on FC but I logged in today to see what FC was like. Under account details it says "Your membership is on us!"

lolwut

...does that mean?
Click to expand...

Have you ever checked account details before? It could always have said that, reflecting the idea that you were in a free beta trial of the service. I don't think it means they suddenly gave you a free perpetual account.
 
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withrye said:
Have you ever checked account details before? It could always have said that, reflecting the idea that you were in a free beta trial of the service. I don't think it means they suddenly gave you a free perpetual account.
Click to expand...

No I haven't. I don't see an option to subscribe (or whatever, though I could be dense as hell haha), and besides... then what's the difference? A trial of GT was the full thing, was it not - aside from a month limit - I don't know too much about the other features of FC to notice if something's missing or not.

😵
 
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"Your membership is on us!"

It says that for everybody who didn't migrate I assume because it says it for mine also even though I have a GT sub that expires this month.
 
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loveoforganic2 said:
Ok - excuse my frankness 🙂 It's just an issue that's been discussed a significant bit in the thread as a complaint that several people have had.

I'll propose what I think would be a very streamlined, easy-to-implement way of correcting the huge number of questions such that they're better for spaced repetition.

I'm sure you all keep track of user statistics. I would identify the %banked obtained where the vast majority of users that reach that %banked go on to reach 100% banked (or 95% banked, whatever, something near the top). Make an offer to them open to the first "x" number of them that respond (probably wouldn't need more than 20-25) for a "free" 2 year subscription to GT (or something along those lines). In return, the users flag questions that aren't optimal and type in a quick comment about how to fix the question so that it is. Under the "feedback" option you could code for a special button open only to those selected users, so that their feedback can be sent to one of your staff who will review and change the questions (after a certain number of comments have been registered on any one question). Or maybe there's just a way you could code it that certain user name's comments are flagged for feedback to be sent to a unique folder.

Within a few months, that should optimize things with fairly negligible effort or cost on your end. If lazy users became an issue, you could just run a stats analysis, see if a user's "% flagged" or some such was an outlier and drop them from the program.

Edit: also, if you GT/firecracker employees get in touch with Lee or one of the administrators for SDN, you can probably get little badges under your icons to verify your affiliation with GT - would probably be a "product sponsor" or some such badge
Click to expand...


No need to apologize, I completely understand where you're coming from 🙂.

We actually have a few ways for all users to tell us what they think about content and questions. On GT, you can continue to use the "feedback" link at the top right to send us content related questions/comments. From FC you can use the feedback bar at the bottom of the page. Our editors review the feedback received multiple times a day and in most cases make changes that day. We are working to build more robust feedback features that will probably entail some of the things that you're describing, but until then we are all ears so PLEASE fire away! Tell us if you don't like questions. If you see a question like the one that was commented on above, let us know there so we can change it right away! Again, we want to make Firecracker better every day, and we really rely on your feedback to do that.

Hope that helps!
 
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Glad to hear there's something in the works. As it is, the number of sub-optimal questions would make it rather burdensome for someone to report them as they come up (why I suggested a "payment" system)
 
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2 questions on FC (to the staff)

1.) will my annotated notes get migrated

2.) Will you implement a question limit option?
 
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loveoforganic2 said:
Glad to hear there's something in the works. As it is, the number of sub-optimal questions would make it rather burdensome for someone to report them as they come up (why I suggested a "payment" system)
Click to expand...

Yeah, I agree that it can be a bit of a pain. Until we get a good 'payment' system going, I encourage you guys to either flag them through our feedback link or email us directly. [email protected] for content/question related issues or [email protected] for tech related issues. We try our best to stay on top of these forums but sometimes direct communication is the way to go.

@ Transformers

1. Yes - your notes will get migrated with the rest of your account.
2. Yes - we are working on creating a limit to impose question limits, but this is still in the works.

Thanks!
 
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Holy crap. Tried migrating like a week ago still frozen account. I have been using anki but sometimes I get sick of making cards so I was truly excited to give this a test drive.

Yuck on over a week of being locked out...
Since whenever I posted on here last.
 
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hope2bpaindoc said:
Anyone tried these guys? I saw an ad on Facebook and signed up because they are having some kinda limited-time free 30-day trial. I think it's like 10/ month after that after a $50 signup fee. Looks pretty sweet so far but I've only signed in once. Free is good! Thought I'd let you guys know, could be a sweet deal: http://www.gunnertraining.com/

if anyone has used GT before, let me know if it's worth it. Thanks! I'm new here but there is so much useful information it's crazy!
Click to expand...

This was the first post made in this epic thread. Dated exactly 3 years back (09.12.2009)
 
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crunchymedicine said:
I am really enjoying these new pictures...it seems like every week there is another picture or two that helps drive things home.
Click to expand...

New pictures? Sounds like FC is improving...I wish they'd figure out how to get some better servers or something, I want to remigrate. Still can't do quizzes on subtopics
 
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SeanatFC said:
Yeah, I agree that it can be a bit of a pain. Until we get a good 'payment' system going, I encourage you guys to either flag them through our feedback link or email us directly. [email protected] for content/question related issues or [email protected] for tech related issues. We try our best to stay on top of these forums but sometimes direct communication is the way to go.

@ Transformers

1. Yes - your notes will get migrated with the rest of your account.
2. Yes - we are working on creating a limit to impose question limits, but this is still in the works.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Here's a suggestion. Instead of completely unflagging topics, could you find out a way to only "high-yield flag" a topic? This way you could still be quizzed on a topic without getting a question like "Name all 9 side effects of X drug."
 
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Going on 2 weeks now and the new Firecracker site is still broken. It's sad that the enthusiasm and momentum generated for the new platform has been completely trampled/killed by this embarrassment of a launch. Each day I care less and less.
 
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Brotato said:
Going on 2 weeks now and the new Firecracker site is still broken. It's sad that the enthusiasm and momentum generated for the new platform has been completely trampled/killed by this embarrassment of a launch. Each day I care less and less.
Click to expand...
I start Psych pretty soon. It would be really nice to start banking cards..
 
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Brotato said:
Going on 2 weeks now and the new Firecracker site is still broken. It's sad that the enthusiasm and momentum generated for the new platform has been completely trampled/killed by this embarrassment of a launch. Each day I care less and less.
Click to expand...

Working fine for me so far. Are you migrating or something?
 
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Lazybastard said:
Working fine for me so far. Are you migrating or something?
Click to expand...

yeah, it works ok for me too...the only thing is you can't migrate yet, they stopped that which is fine by me.
so now I'm doing GT and FC, when they are ready I will let people migrate and see if it works and join them.
 
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Chirurg said:
yeah, it works ok for me too...the only thing is you can't migrate yet, they stopped that which is fine by me.
so now I'm doing GT and FC, when they are ready I will let people migrate and see if it works and join them.
Click to expand...
Hmmm, you should be able to start banking in FC and then add the stuff from GT later right? Any idea if what you bank in FC will still be saved after the migration?
 
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Alvarez13 said:
Hmmm, you should be able to start banking in FC and then add the stuff from GT later right? Any idea if what you bank in FC will still be saved after the migration?
Click to expand...


that's my assumption. would like this to be confirmed by GT-people on here though.
 
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