Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!tcdcs!swift.cs.tcd.ie!maths.tcd.ie!tim
From: tim@maths.tcd.ie (Timothy Murphy)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386
Subject: Re: Does Microport offer Updates to its users?
Message-ID: <1990Sep3.211648.7721@maths.tcd.ie>
Date: 3 Sep 90 21:16:48 GMT
References: <846@iiasa.UUCP> <847@iiasa.UUCP> <10615@rls.UUCP> <334@uport.UUCP> <723@vidiot.UUCP> <1737@ssbn.WLK.COM>
Organization: Dept. of Maths, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.
Lines: 37

In <1737@ssbn.WLK.COM> bill@ssbn.WLK.COM (Bill Kennedy) writes:

>In 1988 my article described
>the Microport effort "I would not dignify it by calling it excrement".
>The software was lousy, support non-existant, and documentation print
>quality very poor (there was even an apology for that enclosed).
...
>The happiest I ever was with V/386 was when the UPS driver carried
>it away, I'd hide and lock the doors if I thought he might bring me another
>Microport effort...  Caveat emptor isn't enough, you have to push it
>through banner first onto billboard size paper.
and much else in similar tone.

This is ridiculously unfair.
I've been running Microport Unix V/386 for a couple of years now,
and feel it's a pretty good product -- certainly for the price.
It's not the best Unix I've seen, but it's not the worst either.
Support was a bit laughable, I agree,
but I didn't really expect more.
(I will always remember the classic reply I got from US support,
'I guess what you've got there is some sort of hardware fault,
or it may be a software bug,'
in a very slow drawl.

Microport is the nearest I've seen
to a really cheap home Unix system.
(I've heard BSD/386 is on the way,
with AT&T code cut out,
so maybe that will be the answer.)



-- 

Timothy Murphy  

e-mail: tim@maths.tcd.ie