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From: phil@brahms.amd.com (Phil Ngai)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.nfs,comp.windows.ms
Subject: Sun PC-NFS deficiencies
Message-ID: <1991Mar7.185009.27239@amd.com>
Date: 7 Mar 91 18:50:09 GMT
Sender: usenet@amd.com (NNTP Posting)
Organization: Advanced Micro Devices; Sunnyvale, CA
Lines: 52

With Sun's release of PC-NFS 3.5, it appears that their product still
does not come close to what PC networking should be. Can you chose
printers from Windows 3.0 in a user-friendly way, from a menu of
servers and their printers? Or do you have to waste hours reading the
manual and struggling with cryptic configuration files? When you want
to reconfigure, do you have to exit Windows and change the cryptic
configuration files again? Do you have to chose options that make no
sense, like the OS2 option when you are in Windows?

Can you query the printer queue status from a Windows menu? Remove
print jobs from a Windows menu??

Are telnet and ftp windows applications, or do they just run in a DOS
shell? What does Windows compatible mean? Not much, apparently.

Is Sun too stupid to do it right? I don't believe it. Does Sun not know
what customers want? That's possible. It appears that no one involved
in Sun PC-NFS has ever sat down in front of a PC running Novell and had
the user-friendliness of real Windows networking demonstrated to them.
It's better than the third alternative: that they don't care what the
customers want.  "They're just brain dead PC users and don't know how
to do things." "Windows is just a passing fad and we're not going to
put resources into supporting it." "PC networks like Novell are beneath
us to study."

You know Sun PC-NFS is not a real PC network when you configure Windows.
For "network", you put "none" when using Sun PC-NFS.

If the network is the computer, then Sun PC-NFS is a user-hostile computer.

I have never had to open a Novell manual and I can do so much more than
I could with PC-NFS even after wasting weeks studying the manuals and
experimenting with countless cryptic options.

At my company, Sun PC-NFS is (currently) the supported option yet none
of the people in my group who use Sun PC-NFS can even print from
Windows and all of the people who use Novell have no trouble printing
from Windows.

I'm sure glad I don't have to use Sun PC-NFS anymore.

Sun's focus may be growing (now that's a mixed metaphor! I guess
growing commitment was too boring.), but I don't consider it
satisfactory yet.

(I don't speak for the company, obviously, since they're still trying
to push it down my throat, this is only my personal opinion, developed
after many months of experience.)

--
My father is on national television!
(Beef Council, Jupiter, Florida)