Can't backup to floppy

[Scott Turner]

In article <153 at carpet.WLK.COM> bill at ssbn.WLK.COM (Bill Kennedy) writes:
>In article <926 at cygnet.CYGNETSYSTEMS> will at cygnet.CYGNETSYSTEMS (Will Nelson) writes:
>I'm weary of being a pioneer, most especially since I wasn't aware I was
>one until I opened the letter.  I'd like to have the manual that's so
>often mentioned in my docs (for which John blames Locus).  I didn't buy a
>*thing* from Locus; I paid full retail for *MICROPORT*.

Yeah, Microport is a might twitchy about this topic. I had some marketing
type call me up last friday and ask me a bunch of "screening" questions.
He said he was looking for 10 DOSMerge users to turn over to a magazine
editor who was doing a DOSMerge review and wanted to talk to some REAL
users. Thinking back over the questions I'm not quite certain what to
make of that phone call, was it for real? Or were they just out finding
out what the troops though of them? :)

But one question that came up, flares attached for attention, was about what
I thought of the industry practice of releasing beta versions of products...

I told the guy I thought beta's were VERY important, but that the customer
should know what they were getting up front. Not when the package arrived.
And that I wasn't too thrilled over this when it happened to me over the
original DOSMerge... Well if they really were looking for 10 happy users
I guess I blew it on that question. :-)

Ah yes! The famous missing manual. Or, "How exactly do you use that $#@!
doskey program?"

Interestingly enough Microport didn't answer my question about how to use
doskey when I asked 'em about it. Maybe they don't have a copy of the manual
either. :)

But I can report that Bell Technologies doesn't have it either. The DOSMerge
they sell, for use with their unix, comes straight from Locus. So I guess
Locus doesn't have the manual either, yet SOMEBODY has it. Else why the
references to it?

The thing that get's under my skin more than the missing DOSMerge manual
(I mean I DID puzzle out how to use doskey all by my lonesome, wellll I did
cheat and use strings too...) are the missing online manual pages. Nobody
has 'em. Neither Microport or Bell Technologies. They do exist for System V
Release 3.0 though, I saw 'em on a MIPS Computing unix platform. They were
GREAT too, AT&T did more than work over the printed dox, the online pages
are MUCH MUCH MUCH better as well.

>book says that I have funds disbursed for value not received.  I agree,
>wholeheartedly with  Karl and Will; CAVEAT EMPTOR and make that phosphor
>red if you are looking at Microport.
>-- 
>Bill Kennedy  Internet:  bill at ssbn.WLK.COM

I say at this point, "Ask not what Microport can do for you, but rather
what you can do for Microport."

If the manual pages just aren't converted from the Generic Release 3.0 notes,
hey! Make the, to quote George Bush, "24 hour time period" of some of us out
here and release 'em as beta's. I know that there are several people around
here at L5 Computing, myself included, that would be happy to help out.

It seems to me that those people who were willing to work WITH Microport got
put on the beta site list and thus got to work with them on making a better
product. Those who would rather jump up and down and scream alot about "I
paid for a fully working product and I want it *NOW* goddamn it!" didn't
get on the beta site list. And since they weren't going to contribute they
should have just decided they couldn't handle the fact that a bug free
product wasn't available and just sued Microport. Then there would be
blissful silence for those trying to fix it since the whinners would be
only able to say "No Comment" since the case was still pending. :)

And I'll say it again, things could be worse. Bell Technologies' often
quoted policy of "We only ship the REAL AT&T certified binaries. Not one
bit has been changed." is a double edged sword... I finally made sense of
their policy of "Refund RMA's before support" when I ran the above through
my head one more time. If there's a bug, no matter HOW BAD, or easy to fix,
they can't fix it!!!! Kinda obvious now that I think about it. A WONDERFUL
Catch-22 though. :)

"Bell Technologies, we sell only the certified AT&T release, no matter how
fuckedup it is. But we support what we sell, so long as we don't have to
modify it."

(They make some really great hardware though, and they do seem to be able to
make bug fixes on the hardware.)

Scott Turner
scotty at l5comp -or- uunet!l5comp!scotty