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From: casey@gauss.llnl.gov (Casey Leedom)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.modems
Subject: Re: V.32bis and V.17 approved by CCITT
Message-ID: <93706@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV>
Date: 22 Mar 91 16:35:22 GMT
References: <3841.27d78365@hayes.uucp> <1991Mar10.190118.10151@panix.uucp> <3847.27da9192@hayes.uucp> <1991Mar11.231226.17795@panix.uucp> <3852.27de1c60@hayes.uucp> <1991Mar17.220044.10341@larouch.uucp> <1991Mar21.051827.28579@newsserver.sfu.ca>
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| From: rob@newsserver.sfu.ca (Rob Carpenter)
| 
| [[Lots of US Robotics knocking and Hayes touting.  Followed of course
|   by a disclaimer saying he had no connection to Hayes other than as a
|   satisfied customer. :-)]]

Rob,
   Do you have particular reasons why you obviously don't like US
Robotics?  Are they based on some bad experiences with either their
products or the company?  I'm curious because we're likely to go out and
buy a bunch of their Courier V.32bis modems.

  Specifically:

| Well, if you want to run out and buy a modem that will only talk to
| other modems of the same kind.  By all means, buy a USR modem.

  But the Hayes that supports Hayes proprietary protocol (sorry, can't
remember the name) can only talk to other similar Hayes modems with those
high speed protocol.  This is a problem with all proprietary protocols
that don't see wide licensing.  A lot of companies implemented such
protocols though because doing V.32 wasn't doable cheaply when it first
came out.  It took the Rockwell V.32 board and other similar plug in
products to make V.32 doable.  Or are you referring to V.32bis?

| How can Hayes have the best modem?  Look at the size of the USR, it's a
| blinking eyesore.  I sure as heck don't want to have a modem the size of
| an encylopaedia volume on my desk.

  It's about the same size as my Telebit T2500.  Uhmmm, in any case,
what's the problem?

| Getting out fast modem standards?  They put this into production BEFORE
| it was a standard.  V.32bis was did not become a "standard" until the
| beginning of this month.  

  Yes, but as we all know, once the standard reached the point it had,
there was very little chance that it would be changed.  USR promised a
ROM upgrade if any were needed to track the final approved V.32bis
standard.  As it stands, there were no changes (as expected), so they
won't have to send out any ROM upgrades for that reason.

| Hayes has already learned their lesson about releasing strange and
| Unusual protocols.  Remeber the V-series modems?  I think Hayes would
| like to forget them.

  As have a bunch of the manufacturers, but customers wanted hign speed
NOW, so the modem manufacturers gave it to them.  It's a suply and demand
market.

| >Please understand that going with your modem vendor when it lags behind
| >agressive vendors would mean money out of our pockets, higher frustration
| >levels (due to the slower modem) and lower productivity for many
| >months.
| 
| I think Higher frustration levels are caused by defective modems.  Not
| by "slow" modem speeds.  

  This is definitely an issue.  If US Robotics product had been a real
dud because they released it as soon as they could get anything floating,
it would have done them a great deal of harm.  As it is, it seems to be
working really well.  So far, I'm happy with it.  I still want to test it
under some even more adverse line conditions though.

  I'm not knocking Hayes at all.  I'm just curious why you dislike US
Robotics so much.

Casey