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- Path: sparky!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!princeton!newross!elan!mg
- From: mg@elan (Michael Golan)
- Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.misc
- Subject: Re: I found IBM's plans on *Prodigy* of all places! (long)
- Message-ID: <mg.712257602@elan>
- Date: 27 Jul 92 17:20:02 GMT
- References: <1992Jul25.081953.1533112@zeus.calpoly.edu>
- Sender: news@newross.Princeton.EDU (USENET News System)
- Organization: Princeton University, Dept. of Computer Science
- Lines: 138
-
- jemenake@zeus.calpoly.edu (Joe Emenaker) writes:
-
- >Here's a copy of a posting I found on Prodigy which apparently came from a
- >file called IBMPLANS.ZIP. The person who posted it opined that it was from
- >IBM.
-
- >THEN, they tried doing
- >the same thing while running XCOPY in a DOS window in the background.
- >OS/2's time went up by 67% to 15 seconds. Windows' time skyrocketed by over
- >500% to 44 seconds.
-
- But window's XCOPY doesnt have a bug that makes it hang, at least...
- It's interesting they choose one of the buggy OS2 utils to test it ...
-
- >[******** TEXT FILE BEGINS *******]
-
- IBM flames follow - not of the original poster ...
-
- >OS/2 QUALITY
- >OS/2 -- A QUALITY SUCCESS STORY
-
-
- H H AAAAA
- H H A A
- HHHHHH AAAAAAA ???????????
- H H A A
- H H A A
-
-
- >
- > To produce the best possible quality product, a new development process
- >was instituted for OS/2 2.0. This new process included small, empowered
- >development teams and an unprecedented beta test program involving 30,000
- >users.
-
- They forgot to tell you: beta testers never saw the final release, and QA
- people were removed :-) The last change to the software was 48 hrs before
- they sent the diskettes to the copier...
-
- Beta of a completely different version (ie pre-WPS, pre-seamless) is
- meaningless. QA must have been the poorest of any IBM product ever. I
- heard IBM'er claim a product typically goes to QA for months after
- it is finished and freezed. OS2 ?
-
- >
- >BUGS
- >
- >OS/2 2.0 consists of about 3.5 million lines of code.
-
- so? so it has less bugs than OS/360 ? thats a success?!
- what does the total number of lines (which is too big, anyway) has to
- do with it? its not like its a 3.5mil line program, i.e the command VIEW
- is an independent buggy program, right? So is XCOPY...
-
- >Since we began
- >shipping, fewer than 10% of our users have called the OS/2 Support Line.
- >More than 75% of these calls are usage, installation, and setup questions.
-
- You mean 25% of 10% or one in every 40 users see a REAL BUG AND CALLS?
- That means one in every 20 people encounter a real problem, or worse!
- That's horrible!! That's quality failure. MS C compiler 6.0 comes to mind...
-
- >We have identified approximately 50 issues that are causing these calls.
- >(Not all are bugs. Some are for specific device support that we did not
- >intend to include until later releases, but we're now working on due to
- >customer interest.)
-
- This seems to imply that IBM found less than 50 bugs! I found more myself!
- MS, you want to hire me to take shots at IBM's sh***y software QA?
-
-
- >About 20 can cause a major function to be
- >impacted, but the system continues to work, albeit with an inconvenient
- >workaround.
-
- Oh come on, I have to boot OS2 at least once a day, or it goes nuts.
- Thats about as good as my DV/DOS setup was, and thats not good enough.
-
- [No I dont have any hardware problems, don't tell me its my hardware. I know
- a little about software to tell, for sure, that all these problems are
- software related. MY vanilla 386/33 8M ESDI310M ATI vantage work fine thankyou]
-
- >The remaining 25 or so are inconveniences which affect enough customers that
- >we have made them a priority. An example is failing to recognize that a
- >window has been closed prior to Shutdown. Upon reboot, the window is open
- >and the user would have to click the mouse button twice to close it again.
-
- An example is WPS going nuts forcing you to waste time re-botting. When you
- reboot, the screen goes blank, and you need to reboot again, upon which
- all is fine. If this isn't a serious severe problem, I cant imagine what is.
- At least with UAE, dos boots quickly...
-
- >SERVICE STRATEGY
- >
- >We are continuing to work these problems in priority sequence and have
- >posted a number of fixes on COMPUSERVE, OS/2 BBS, and Internet
-
- Is this the same strategy for sending OS2 1.3->2.0 upgrades? LIFO ?
- i.e Least Important bug First out ? (No I didnt upgrade, but the stories!)
-
- >In the fall there will be a Performance and Service Pack which will include
- >all available fixes plus some performance enhancements. The Pack will be
- >available either electronically or on diskettes for a nominal charge
-
- Thank god. But if it only includes the currently availble fixes, and IBM
- claims that the rest is just a 'minor issue', I am going to buy the NT SDK
- and take a look...
-
- >ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
- >
- >FIXES CURRENTLY ON COMPUSERVE
- >o Can't install MFM/RLL (older family 1) disk drives
- >o If the swapper file expands to a partition boundary, it won't shrink
- > again until system reboot.
- >o Some Western Digital chip sets can hang during system install
- >o Some Tseng chip sets in SVGA mode experience display corruption going to
- > and from a full screen Virtual DOS Machine
- >o Intermittent trap in the Win OS/2 session after exiting WIN-OS/2 on
- > 4MB systems.
- >
-
- These are minor problems indeed. What about all the other crashes/problems?
-
-
- I don't notice OS2 being a bit slower
-
- I don't care having to live with some bugs
-
- I don't mind to wait a bit for fixes, these is indeed a complex new system
-
- I do mind not seeing major problems fixed in 4 months.
-
- I mind very much that IBM seems to ignore the problems and report 'success'.
-
- What Can I say about OS2 now? Its a fantatic buggy program. pun intendend.
-
- Michael Golan
- mg@princeton.edu
-