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From: tjohn@GUMBY.CFSMO.HONEYWELL.COM ("Tony John")
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo
Subject: Re: LETTER 2 -- DN10K, SNAKES, & OSF
Message-ID: <9105101457.AA04324@OTIS.cfsmo.honeywell.com>
Date: 10 May 91 14:57:04 GMT
References: <9105092306.AA22321@pan.ssec.honeywell.com>
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These are just some thoughts and opinions that I have on John's draft
letter to HP.  (John, please feel free to use whatever you need.)

Why do I get the feeling that in the time since HP purchased
Apollo, HP management still doesn't understand what they 
bought.  It's really becoming apparent that HP is becoming 
another one of those U.S. companies that  doesn't listen to
their customers, and maybe don't even know who there customers
are.

Have you noticed that when the first USENET letter went out, it
looked like HP management was going to listen to us and try to 
meet our needs on support.  Now it looks like HP has gone back to 
ignoring us again.  (Why else would we be working on another letter?)
man   What ever happened to the ftp/archive site that HP said they were
going to have?  Does anyone in the HP management monitor this group
anymore?  It sure doesn't look like it.

Under Topic #1:

John, I think you meant a Motorola 68040 not a 68010.

We have a DN10000 at Commercial Flight Systems.  We use it to run
Mentor Graphics digital simulations.  Mentor has already said that
they will not support the DN10000 with their next SW release V8.0.  
They have told us that we will be "taken care of to our satisfaction" 
but when we try to pin them down on how they will take care of us,
they tap dance around the problem.  I feel that HP needs to take 
definite, positive action on the future of the DN10000 because Mentor
doesn't have any idea of what to do.

Under Topic #2:

When I was still working for Honeywell Military Avionics Division,
we purchased a couple of HP-UX 400t's for Mechanical CAE.  One of
the items that influenced our decision to go with HP workstations
instead of Sun was that the local HP office told us that they would
help us get Domain/OS and HP-UX to talk to each other.  Well HP, MAvD
is still waiting for that help.  HP hasn't lifted a finger to do 
anything.

HP-VUE is a nice product.  Personnaly, I like Motif better than the
DM on Apollo because I still get to use DM shells and the DM editor.  I
also like using an xterm window when I need to login to remote systems.
If DM shells and a DM-like editor were added to HP-VUE,  I think HP 
would have an excellent GUI product that would beat the pants off of
the competition.

Under Topic #3:

HP saying that the "standard is better" is a bunch of bulls___.  Look 
what IBM and Sun did.  DOS and NFS are so-called "standards" because
users saw what they liked and the two companies promoted the hell out
of the products saying they were "standard".  Why can't HP say the same
thing?  They're almost as big as IBM and bigger than Sun, they ought to
be able to promote a product or did they cut the advertising budget, or
are they afraid to step on some toes?

The reason we purchase a certain workstation and application software 
is that it fits our design process, and to help us design and produce a
product faster, better, and cheaper than the competition.  All we want
to do is get the job done.  When you stop listening to your customer,
you start losing market share, and we look to other vendors for help.
This is what happened to Apollo.  This is also what HP is doing, not
listening to their customers, and I bet they're starting to lose 
purchase contracts to their competitors who have been bit by HP or 
Apollo before.

=====================================================================
Tony John                         Honeywell Commercial Flight Systems
612-785-4256                      MN51-1320  8840 Evergreen Blvd.
tjohn@gumby.cfsmo.honeywell.com   Coon Rapids, MN 55433

My opinions are mine.  Honeywell isn't interested in them, and they
wouldn't know what to do with them anyway.  
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