Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!tank!rtp1
From: rtp1@tank.uchicago.edu (raymond thomas pierrehumbert)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo
Subject: Re:  SR10.2 and life
Message-ID: <7004@tank.uchicago.edu>
Date: 3 Jan 90 03:26:06 GMT
References: <47cb7191b.000f088@caen.engin.umich.edu>
Organization: University of Chicago
Lines: 28

I never said the competition was any better, did I?  I bought an Apollo,
didn't I?  Did I even say I wish I had bought a Sun or SG (I don't, btw)?
Basically, Sun's whole product line has become as boring as IBM
mainframes, except for the Sparcstation, which is a great little machine
at a very fair price.    
    All that notwithstanding, things in the workstation world are much
worse than they ought or need to be, and if we are going to start 
improving things, why not start with Apollo/HP.  I think that 
breaking something as important as NFS, and not coordinating the
NFS release with the 10.2 upgrade, is very shoddy workmanship.  If
it hadn't been for the chance encounter here, I probably would have
installed 10.2, found that NFS wouldn't work, and been out of 
business until it all got straightened out.  Things shouldn't be
that way.  And I wouldn't mind so much paying the piddling $100 for
a new NFS, if it weren't so hard to find out just what to order,
and if it didn't take so long to get it.  There is no good reason
it should take longer to get a tape cartridge than it takes to
get Mac or PC software, but it always does (see my posting on 
Fortran, below).  If Apollo really wants to be at the top of the heap,
they will fix this problem.
    And what ever became of the idea of producing a quality product and
standing behind it?  It is true that software prices (initial) at
Apollo are about the lowest in the business, but the discounted 
present value of the maintainence charge makes the real cost astronomical.
I'd rather pay a fair price up front, and then have Apollo stand 
behind there product, and guarantee that they will inform me
when they do something to break it, (and to send along the appropriate
update in a timely fashion).