dalton@gladys.UUCP (David Dalton) (01/03/86)
I think it's very, very nice of AT&T to provide free upgrades of the system software for the UNIX PC. However, I'm a little annoyed at the $195 cost of upgrading the utilities package. I bought the utilities in October ($495), and now AT&T tells me in the upgrade letter that the older version will not be supported after March 3. So: AT&T cuts me off on a $495 package that I've had for only a few months. I called customer support to find out exactly what the enhancements are in version 3.0 of the UNIX Utilities. There was some confusion, but apparently the changes involve the compiler and its library files. They tell me that no changes have been made in the document preparation set. Version 3.0 includes the Korn shell, but that's available free from The Store, and I am already using it. Apparently version 3.0 includes a new Programmer's Guide and a new System V User's Manual, though they seemed uncertain about that. I bit the bullet and bought the upgrade, but it gripes me that it cost me $700 rather than $500. I could understand paying so much for an upgrade after a year or more, but five months?
gwyn@brl-tgr.ARPA (Doug Gwyn <gwyn>) (01/03/86)
DEC used to have a policy (perhaps they still do) of guaranteeing at least one free update to their operating systems. Seems like a great policy; perhaps you should suggest it to AT&T.