Unbundling - we all do it, so let's stop complaining

[Bill Kennedy]

In article <4664 at b-tech.UUCP> zeeff at b-tech.UUCP (Jon Zeeff) writes:
>In article <393 at uport.UUCP> plocher at uport.UUCP (John Plocher) writes:
>>
>>With DosMerge 1.0 (and not 0.2 or 0.3) you add the following line to the file
>>/etc/dosdev
>
>Is DosMerge 1.0 something we can get *now*?

I was (not very politely) informed "we do not update a beta with a beta".
My Merge/386 was 0.2 and had `BETA' marked out with magic marker.  There
was no discount or anything, full list price, but it didn't work with the
Computone Intelliport AT-4 or AT-8.  The boards and driver worked OK with
Merge not installed.  The vendor who sold me the boards, this was in April,
told me that 1.0 was available so I tried to get it.

I suppose I can sympathize with Microport for not wanting to have a lot of
stuff rattle around out there, but until now, I learned to expect one or
more of the following if I was a beta site -

being informed I was a beta site (there was a letter thanking the "pioneers")
volunteering to be a beta site
price break
technical support
frequent bug fixes and updates
free update to the commercial release

Merge/386?  `None of the above'.  I shouldn't say that, I did get some
help from technical support, "try another low level format".  After the
third trip up that dead end street I wrote it off and went on.  John
Plocher is cited in this followup and he alludes to knowing that there
are problems in earlier versions (which means there *WERE*), but my
problems happened before he was there.  I've seen nothing in this or
any other group to indicate that anyone at Microport, other than John,
is committed or even interested in fixing anything.  BTW, `' things are
me, "" things are verbatim quotes from Microport.

That's not a flame, it's not meant to make anyone angry.  It's just a
playback of my own experience.  On the flip side, I am a satisfied
user of V/AT, I haven't had the courage to install Merge/286 yet but I
haven't put VP/ix on my SCO system either, so that makes me a fraidy.
After my experiences with Merge/386 I don't mind admitting I'm jumpy.
-- 
Bill Kennedy  usenet      {killer,att,rutgers,sun!daver,uunet!bigtex}!ssbn!bill
              internet    bill at ssbn.WLK.COM