Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!werner
From: werner@cs.utexas.edu (Werner Uhrig)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.apps
Subject: Re: Norton Utilties Shipped (But Still Buggy)
Message-ID: <846@earth.cs.utexas.edu>
Date: 30 Jul 90 23:58:37 GMT
References: <19270@well.sf.ca.us> <11117@chaph.usc.edu>
Distribution: comp
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 41

In article <11117@chaph.usc.edu> wilber@nunki.usc.edu (John Wilber) writes:
>In article <19270@well.sf.ca.us> bmug@well.sf.ca.us (BMUG) writes:
>>I have touched a shipping copy of Norton Utilities for the Mac at Computerware
>>(MacOrchard) Berkeley.  Yesterday.  However, Steve Costa, our disk recovery
>>guru, warns that it still can't recover some of his test disks.  Therefore,
>>don't expect it to be perfect!
>
>Oh come on, no software can fix ALL disk problems (some are hardware related 
>and some are just plain unrecoverable problems).  Just because Disk Doctor
>can't fix every disk in the world doesn't mean it has bugs.  The important 
>issue is whether it fixes more disk problems than the alternatives.  My
>experience has been that it does a *much* better job than the competition.
>
>By the way, you should check your source to see if Steve was really running 
>the final release of NUM.  Steve Costa has complained loudly in the past 
>about problems with BETA versions of NUM.  He should know better than the 
>complain about finding problems in beta-ware.  If it had no problems, it 
>wouldn't be beta would it?

	not quite.  beta is when the author thinks it is bug-free but would
	like others to verify that before staking his reputation on it by
	taking money for it (or so the theory goes)

	The fact that a product goes through a lot of beta-iterations may be
	an indicator that it's  software trying to do something very hard,
	or that the authors didn't quite know what they were doing.

	I am a beta-tester of the Norton Utilities and would like to give
	the authors the benefit of the doubt as it is a long needed piece of 
	software and a very tricky problem to solve ...

					Cheers,		---Werner

ps: all the original article said was: "don't expect it to be perfect",
	and I can hardly see why anyone would object to that statement.

	of course, one would like this particular type of software to be
	perfect (and very much so), but what do you think my guess is why
	Apple has left their users high and dry by providing so few and
	incomplete system utilities?  if you said something relating to
	"a bag of worms", you are very close ...