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From: daver@mentor.com (Dave Reynolds @ APD x1335)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo
Subject: Re: Netpower: OPEN LETTER - call for signatures
Message-ID: <1990Aug12.090212.8845@mentor.com>
Date: 12 Aug 90 09:02:12 GMT
References: <1990Jul6.015817.23710@metro.ucc.su.OZ.AU> <1990Aug1.014631.4721@metro.ucc.su.OZ.AU> <1990Aug1.020404.5981@metro.ucc.su.OZ.AU>
Reply-To: daver@apd.MENTOR.COM (Dave Reynolds @ APD x1335)
Organization: Mentor Graphics
Lines: 36

After reading the open letter and some of the following discussions, I wanted
to comment on things from a slightly different perspective, since I work at a
large, "wealthy," Apollo customer/OEM (though, as usual, my opinions are 
purely my own). 

Something I have seen either voiced or implied in several articles is a
belief that some of you may see lesser degrees of response because you
are a small customer, or worse yet, educational instead of commercial.
That's not really the case though. If I submit an APR throught channels,
against a released version of s/w, I don't get any better (or more
timely) response than someone with only a single Apollo node.

What saves us is that fact that we beta test most new OS's. And the
beta problem reports esentially bypass the support group, and go
straight into the R&D group - where I've amost always gotten
great response, once they get the APR. And you will note that
the areas of functionality that aren't used by someone like us,
typically have many more problems than those areas that are
heavily used (and tested!) by us. (So you should be pleased to
hear that Mentor's 8.0 release uses TCP/IP and NCS fairly heavily).

I applaud your effort; there are things on your list that would be
of immense benefit to all of us - some are things Mentor has tried to get,
and has been unsuccessful. I for one would dearly love to look at
a known bugs list before deciding how to proceed with some odd
little quirky problem.

I personally think a substantial reson for the seeming inaction on HP's
part, is that even after this amount of time, they still don't really
understand what they inherited, as it is so foreign to HP's philosophy
on customer support. Only by an ongoing education effort such as this
one do we stand any chance of effecting a substantial change.
-- 
Dave Reynolds                                       Advanced Products Division
daver@apd.MENTOR.COM                                Mentor Graphics Corporation
 ...{sequent, apollo, uunet}!mntgfx!daver           (503) 626-1335