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- Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU
- Path: sparky!uunet!paladin.american.edu!auvm!BME1.UTMEM.EDU!BUCHANAN
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- Message-ID: <9209022214.AA06319@bme1.utmem.edu>
- Newsgroups: bit.listserv.dectei-l
- Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 17:14:59 -0500
- Sender: "DEC's The Education Initiative Discussion List"
- <DECTEI-L@UBVM.BITNET>
- From: buchanan@BME1.UTMEM.EDU
- Subject: Re: VMS DECWINDOWS MOTIF 1
- In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 27 Aug 92 10:46:12 PDT."
- Lines: 68
-
- I also agree one should not bite the hand that feeds you however, in
- the Ultrix world, things are also not as rosy as they could be. One
- year ago, I started buying documentation and distribution for DEC
- products listed on the CSLG Ultrix list. Many of these product require
- PAKS. Others require that Motif be installed. I still do not have
- PAKS for any of these products (except RISC Pascal which I did get by a
- mechanism I'm not sure about). I kept hearing for the last CSLG year
- that 1. Ultrix products do not require PAKS (not true) or that 2.
- Ultrix PAKS will be sent to my campus coordinator soon (has not
- happened as of a week ago when I last checked). This means I now have
- products I never installed which now have been upgraded (or included in
- the Con DIST, or both). Now I have been hearing for several months
- that Ultrix PAKS would be sent with renewal of the CSLG. Our CSLG
- agreement used to expire in March, I understand. However now I am told
- it expired in August. As near as I can tell, the renewal stuff hasn't
- come. Free or not and, since I spent $2K or so on distributions, they
- were not free, without licenses, these products are useless. Given all
- the problems when PAKS were introduced for VMS (I knew about VMS in a
- previous life), all of this should have been avoided on the Ultrix side.
-
- Second problem::Ultrix Motif. I have been waiting through several
- releases of Ultrix under the impression from various DEC
- representatives that Motif would become the default for Ultrix and all
- I have to do is wait. This has not occurred. I finally ordered
- (through our cumbersome bid procedure) the OSF/Motif developers kit,
- which appeared to be the only way to get Motif and thus to use the
- layered products which require it. This order was returned unfilled by
- my local DEC sales office with the notation that Motif was a "no
- charge" item. Unfortunately, without the distribution I still couldn't
- install it. I got messages left from 3 different DEC people that "OSF
- Motif is on the Ultrix distribution". As of Ultrix 4.3a, the most
- recent available to me, that is definitely NOT true. I finally
- "borrowed" a motif distribution from someone else, again so I could use
- the products I purchased the distributions and documentation for.
-
- Third problem::Campus Service Agreement (CSA). My local DEC office
- denies the existance of this program and I can get no information from
- them. They arranged a nice lunch down on Beale Street with a
- representative of DEC's "Desktop" service organization but it soon
- became obvious to both of us that what we want is not what he is
- selling. As an authorized Apple service organization, we are generally
- geared up for things like the CSA. Since I feel some people were less
- than forthcoming about this item, trying to maintain full service
- contracts, we have dropped a significant amount of our DEC maintenance
- contracts, opting instead for self maintenance--probably a net loss of
- revenue to DEC.
-
- I realize much of this may be beyond the control of the TEI people, but
- this kind of stuff, combined with questions about DEC's commitment to
- MIPS, questions about OSF1 availability and licensing and Alpha
- availability add to the frustrations of dealing with DEC and the TEI
- for an Ultrix person--not to mention that much of the TEI (and ESL
- particularly) is based upon a computer center-VAX/VMS model which is
- minimally appropriate for many of us. I am sorry if this is
- inappropriately critical, but I have held my tongue in public for over
- a year, hoping things would get better. They've gotten worse. I have
- bought 10 DECstation 5000s without talking to a Sun or IBM salesman
- since I moved to Memphis almost 2 years ago, but I'm about to get out
- my Yellow Pages.
-
- Note that in all of this, I have not complained about the PRICE of anything.
-
- Jack Buchanan, MSEE, MD,
- Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Medicine
- Director, Biomedical Engineering Distributed Computing Research Environment
- University of Tennessee, Memphis
- Memphis, TN 38163
- buchanan@bme1.utmem.edu
-