pre1@sphinx.uchicago.edu (Grant Prellwitz) (07/20/87)
I just finished reading the form that came over the net a while ago to upgrade to DOS 3.3. The last paragraph says in part: "Within 30 days of receipt of the IBM DOS Program Version 3.30 Upgrade Kit, I agree to destroy the programs on the original IBM DOS Program diskettes and all copies of the program." In other words, Once you buy DOS 3.30, you have to use it and no other version of DOS (unless you pay the full price for another version) EVEN IF YOU ARE STRUCK BY THE HARD DISK INCOMPATABILITY PROBLEM. It appears to me that this is another instance of IBM saying "you'll go where we want you to go with our products or you don't count." Witness the following: 1) the above restrictions on upgrading. 2) their stating that 3.30 is the only official 3.x version. 3) discontinuing the PC/XT and AT lines, thereby forcing potential IBM customers to go with the PS/2. I used to think that the IBM bashing that went on here was a little excessive at times. Now I'm not so sure. customers -- =====================Grant Prellwitz========================== !ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!pre1 pre1@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP 76474,2121 (CIS) pre1 (BIX) The DOCTOR didn't need a funny line, why do I?
nomad@orstcs.cs.ORST.EDU (07/21/87)
I missed this form for upgrading to PC-DOS 3.3, would someone please send me
(e-mail please!) a copy of it?
nomad@orstcs
-------------------------
LEE DAMON FidoNet: 152/201 (The Castle) - (503) 757-8841
nomad@cs.orst.edu CSnet: nomad@cs.orst.edu
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"I've gone out and I don't think I'm expected back."master@uop.UUCP (Nasser Al Ismaily) (07/24/87)
> > I missed this form for upgrading to PC-DOS 3.3, would someone please send me > (e-mail please!) a copy of it? > I would also appreciate if someone would send me a copy Thanks........
cliff@rlgvax.UUCP (Cliff Joslyn) (07/24/87)
In article <428@uop.UUCP>, master@uop.UUCP (Nasser Al Ismaily) writes: > > > > I missed this form for upgrading to PC-DOS 3.3, would someone please send me > > (e-mail please!) a copy of it? > > > > I would also appreciate if someone would send me a copy > Thanks........ Me too, please! Food for mail Food for mail Food for mail Food for mail -- O-----------------------------------------------------------------------> | Cliff Joslyn, Computer Consoles Inc., Reston, Virgnia, but my opinions. | UUCP: ..!seismo!rlgvax!cliff V All the world is biscuit shaped
madd@bucsb.bu.edu.UUCP (Jim "Jack" Frost) (08/02/87)
In article <2090@sphinx.uchicago.edu> pre1@sphinx.UUCP (Grant Prellwitz) writes: >I used to think that the IBM bashing that went on here was a little excessive >at times. Now I'm not so sure. Oh boy. If you don't think IBM needs some bashing, you've been in a closet. Never before have I seen a company that cares so little for their customers. Never. I've been dealing with them for only 3 years and I'm sick of it. You want an IBM product? Pay 20 to 30% more than the price of competitive models, expect poorer performance, gamble on IBM saying "forget this" and moving on to other products, expect to pay 1% of the price of what you paid for it in monthly maintenance (this works out to be a substantial amount of money each year, BTW, but is often necessary because the reliability of some of IBM's equipment is horrendous). Care to discuss my reasons for these statements? Here they come: Price: compare the pricing of IBM's micros to competition. If you're not suitably convinced, look at what you get for your money when you buy a System/36. A sun workstation is about as powerful and much, much cheaper. Performance: IBM came out with an AT that COULD have been run at 8MHz initially. Why didn't they do this? More recently, IBM shipped PS/2 model 50s with 80ms hard drives. The model 50 is some 20% faster than the AT (this is brought up a LOT in their new catalog), yet the AT has a 35ms drive. Why? In the mainframe world, IBM in the past has charged large amounts of money for a "hardware upgrade" that boosted system performance by considerable amounts. This upgrade consisted of removing a jumper. Nice going, IBM. Support: IBM has in the past just dropped items with zero support for their loyal customers. The best case for this is the famed Datamaster system, which was the precursor of the PC. It was a horrid machine that only understood BASIC, gave numeric errors (eg ERROR 2048), had the same ghastly keypad as the PC, used 8" diskettes, and was dreadfully slow. Not surprisingly it did not sell well. IBM dropped the machine and all support. Maintenance: IBM maintenance is costly. We had an IBM System/32 (quite a reliable machine) who's maintenance cost was $600/month. The machine had an initial cost of about $60000. What warrants such costly maintenance? I saw the IBM guy in our office just twice in over two years; certainly the maintenance was overpriced in this case. Sometimes hate maintenance people cannot even find the problem. For instance, one rather large organization I am associated with bought an IBM mainframe a while ago. After the system was installed, key people noticed that its performance was something like half of what IBM advertised it to be. Assuming a problem, they called in maintenance. Nobody found anything wrong. Later, one of the people operating the machine noticed a wire that went between a couple of contacts. This wire held the machine in sort of a hardware test state, cutting its performance by some 50%. And the maintenance people never found it. On a good note, IBM agreed to buy some non-IBM equipment for said institution in order not to have this event publicised (and, I'm sure, not to be sued). The details of this event are not distributed because I don't think I'm even supposed to know about it. Reliability: How many people own an IBM PC? A real one? Now, how many have had problems (initially) with it? In my experience, all but one of the IBM PC systems owned by people I knew were flawed when they purchased them. I admit that current releases have done much better, but even the AT had problems with its hard drives initially. Anyone care to comment about IBM mainframe reliability? On other ground, why is it that the people who built the Selectric II, which set the standard for typewriter key formats, took THREE MAJOR REVISIONS of their PC keyboard before getting it right? Stupid. Just plain stupid. The best way to a customer's heart is through his data access devices. Give a typist a good keyboard and they'll ignore all kinds of other problems -- I know, I am a typist. I'd rather work on my ancient Kaypro (best keyboard ANYWHERE for typing) than on an IBM AT, although the software on the AT is much, much better. Also, notice the horrid flickering of some of the IBM video boards. The person who allowed the public to see that should have been tortured and killed slowly. It gives even dedicated IBM lovers a headache inside of ten minutes. Now, let's talk about IBM software. Have you ever seen a really good software package made by IBM? I have not. Ever. Reviewers often call it mediocre at best. I have to deal with just one IBM package on a regular basis -- DisplayWrite. Now, Displaywrite is a pretty nice package. It does nice formatting, has a great spelling checker, and looks neat. But it's excruciatingly painful to use. When you want to delete from the beginning of a line to the end of another, you hit delete and then return. Since DisplayWrite automatically wraps words, this is really, really annoying to people who are accustomed to just backspacing their errors and blasting away. On other ground, this particular package supports almost no printers. Specifically, it does not support even one laserprinter. (Well, DisplayWrite III doesn't -- I haven't used DW4.) Grr. And the cost for this program? Hundreds. Other, much much better, wordprecessors go for much less and do much more. For example, PC-Write supports some 400 printers and ten laserprinters. It supports 35 Hewlett-Packard font sets alone. WordPerfect supports quite a few, too. And we won't even talk about Microsoft Word or Lotus Manuscript, whose main thing in life seems to be making awesome looking text. Oh, one more thing. IBM wanted the PC version of Displaywrite to be compatible with files from their bigger machines, so they made the files all EBCDIC (even though you need special conversion stuff just to pull it off the floppy from the other system -- why didn't they just give you a neat utility to convert?). I've done some major bashing here. In general, my complaints about IBM come from their braindamaged look at customers. At least as far as computers go, their attitude has been poor (at best). Rule number one of surviving: do not bite the hand that feeds you. While IBM is big enough and strong enough to survive the clone wars, the days are coming (quickly, I may add) when the big mainframes will be threatened by new, cheap, user-friendly mainframes by other companies. Unless they change their tune before then, IBM is going to be a hurting unit when that day comes. Are you listening, IBM? Or do user complaints still go in one ear and out the other? %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Jim Frost * The Madd Hacker | UUCP: ..!harvard!bu-cs!bucsb!madd H H | ARPA: madd@bucsb.bu.edu H-C-C-OH <- heehee +---------+---------------------------------- H H | "We are strangers in a world we never made"
darrylo@hpsrlc.UUCP (08/03/87)
[ Gentle ribbing on ] In comp.sys.ibm.pc, madd@bucsb.bu.edu.UUCP (Jim "Jack" Frost) writes: > In article <2090@sphinx.uchicago.edu> pre1@sphinx.UUCP (Grant Prellwitz) writes: > >I used to think that the IBM bashing that went on here was a little excessive > >at times. Now I'm not so sure. > [ ... ] > On other ground, why is it that the people who built the Selectric II, > which set the standard for typewriter key formats, took THREE MAJOR > REVISIONS of their PC keyboard before getting it right? Stupid. Just > plain stupid. The best way to a customer's heart is through his data > access devices. Give a typist a good keyboard and they'll ignore all > kinds of other problems -- I know, I am a typist. I'd rather work on Actually, I really like the FEEL of the original IBM keyboard; the layout definitely left much to be desired, though. I've yet to see (er, feel) a keyboard whose feel even comes close to that of the original one. Most of the keyboards that I've seen feel like a pile of grits -- mushy, mushy, and mushy. What makes you think that IBM has finally gotten the keyboard right :-)? I almost like the new IBM keyboard, but the @$&*(!?! function keys are in the wrong place!!! Placing the function keys as two rows of five on the left was one of the few things IBM did right on the original keyboard. With the old keyboard, you could hit a shift/control/alt function key very quickly with one hand. Try that with the new keyboard. [ ... ] > Now, let's talk about IBM software. Have you ever seen a really good > software package made by IBM? I have not. Ever. Reviewers often Actually, a little-known program called "Personal Editor II" is one of the best low-cost editors I've seen. It's VERY fast, has a reconfigurable keyboard (even letters), has a simple macro language, can edit multiple files, can handle files larger than memory, etc., etc.. I don't think they sell it any more, however. :-( [ ... ] > %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% > Jim Frost * The Madd Hacker | UUCP: ..!harvard!bu-cs!bucsb!madd > H H | ARPA: madd@bucsb.bu.edu > H-C-C-OH <- heehee +---------+---------------------------------- > H H | "We are strangers in a world we never made" > ----------
gerard@tscs.UUCP (Stephen M. Gerard) (08/06/87)
In article <3320041@hpsrlc.HP.COM> darrylo@hpsrlc.UUCP writes: >In comp.sys.ibm.pc, madd@bucsb.bu.edu.UUCP (Jim "Jack" Frost) writes: >> In article <2090@sphinx.uchicago.edu> pre1@sphinx.UUCP (Grant Prellwitz) writes: >> Now, let's talk about IBM software. Have you ever seen a really good >> software package made by IBM? I have not. Ever. Reviewers often > > Actually, a little-known program called "Personal Editor II" >is one of the best low-cost editors I've seen. It's VERY fast, has a >reconfigurable keyboard (even letters), has a simple macro language, >can edit multiple files, can handle files larger than memory, etc., >etc.. I don't think they sell it any more, however. :-( Actually, IBM did not write the Personal Editor, a person by the name of Jim Wyllie did. IBM only distributed it in their Personally Developed Software library. So the quest continues is search of a good program written by IBM :-). PE2 has one very nice feature, the ability to copy/move a block of text from any starting to ending column with any number of lines and maintain perfect columnization of that text. I wish vi could do this. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Stephen Gerard - Total Support Computer Systems - Tampa - (813) 876-5990 UUCP: ...{codas, gatech}!usfvax2!tscs!gerard US-MAIL: Post Office Box 15395 - Tampa, Florida 33684-5395
mc35+@andrew.cmu.edu (Mark Chance) (08/06/87)
> Actually, IBM did not write the Personal Editor, a person by the name of Jim > Wyllie did. IBM only distributed it in their Personally Developed Software > library. So the quest continues in search of a good program written by IBM :-). Do not jump to conclusions so fast! It happens that Jim Wyllie works at the Almaden Research Center of IBM. The initial version of PE was written over a Thanksgiving holiday. It was released inside IBM as ED and used and tested quite heavily. Then it was released as Personal Editor in a pastel denim binder (pdb). He then created PE II some time later which was sold through Personally Developed Software. Actually 'Personally Developed Software' was a euphemism for 'Developed by IBM employees in their spare time at home'. It is unfortunate for everyone that the program has been discontinued. The good news for PE is that I believe there has been a 'statement of intent' to support some form of it under OS/2. Mark Chance mc35+ @ andrew.cmu.edu Information Technology Center Carnegie-Mellon / IBM
mike@ivory.SanDiego.NCR.COM (Michael Lodman) (08/07/87)
In article <135@tscs.UUCP> gerard@tscs.UUCP (system administrator) writes: >Actually, IBM did not write the Personal Editor, a person by the name of Jim >Wyllie did. IBM only distributed it in their Personally Developed Software >library. So the quest continues is search of a good program written by IBM :-). How about the utility program Disk Repair? It was much better for file and sector manipulation of disks than anything then available that I used. It still was better at editing things like directory entries than Norton and may still be as I don't have a current copy. -- Michael Lodman (619) 485-3335 Advanced Development NCR Corporation E&M San Diego mike.lodman@ivory.SanDiego.NCR.COM {sdcsvax,cbatt,dcdwest,nosc.ARPA,ihnp4}!ncr-sd!ivory!lodman
kevinc@auvax.UUCP (Kevin Crocker) (08/07/87)
Jim frost stated: > Actually, a little-known program called "Personal Editor II" > is one of the best low-cost editors I've seen. It's VERY fast, has a > reconfigurable keyboard (even letters), has a simple macro language, > can edit multiple files, can handle files larger than memory, etc., > etc.. I don't think they sell it any more, however. :-( > FOR INFORMATION ONLY: I just looked through an IBM document call The Directory (Personally Developed Software for IBM Personal Computers direct from IBM) and on page 44 under the Secion Productivity Family is a listing for the Personal Editor II written by Jim Wylie the same as the original Personal Editor. BEWARE: this booklet is a CANADIAN publication so it may be different elsewhere. Price $74.99 Cdn PArt No. 6276560. As an avid user of Personal Editor I am extremely happy to see this new product. I cannot wait to get my copy!! PERSONAL EDITOR II and PERSONAL EDITOR are quite likely copyright IBM. disclaimer: I do not work for IBM and am just a happy customer or this product. alberta!auvax!kevinc (Kevin Crocker Athabasca University) Do our employers have opinions or is that what we get paid for!
tim@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu (Timothy L. Kay) (08/08/87)
>How about the utility program Disk Repair? It was much better for file >and sector manipulation of disks than anything then available that I used. >It still was better at editing things like directory entries than Norton >and may still be as I don't have a current copy. Funny you should mention Disk Repair. A friend had a bad disk, and nothing would read it. We tried every utility. Then we decided to try Disk Repair, eventhough we have never had a bit of luck with ANY package ever written by an IBMer. To our surprise, the contents of the file appeared on the screen! We were amazed. Then, we were even more amazed that there was no option in Disk Repair to do anything with the data. We could see it but we couldn't put it anywhere (like the other floppy drive). We couldn't patch anything because some of the sectors on the floppy physically were bad. So, we copied the data onto paper one sector at a time. As others have, I challenge you to name just ONE decent piece of software (available to the public) ever written by an IBM employee.
mike@ivory.SanDiego.NCR.COM (Michael Lodman) (08/10/87)
In article <3524@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> tim@cit-vax.UUCP (Timothy L. Kay) writes: >Funny you should mention Disk Repair. etc. I had this same exact problem. My solution: use the grab feature of Sidekick to copy the screen to a file. Recovered two papers while I was at Caltech this way. Worked like a champ. I still think Disk Repair is a great program. -- Michael Lodman (619) 485-3335 Advanced Development NCR Corporation E&M San Diego mike.lodman@ivory.SanDiego.NCR.COM {sdcsvax,cbatt,dcdwest,nosc.ARPA,ihnp4}!ncr-sd!ivory!lodman When you die, if you've been very, very good, you'll go to ... Montana.
tommie@psivax.UUCP (Tom Levin) (08/11/87)
In article <3524@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> tim@cit-vax.UUCP (Timothy L. Kay) writes: >Funny you should mention Disk Repair. A friend had a bad disk, and nothing >would read it. We tried every utility. Then we decided to try Disk Repair, >eventhough we have never had a bit of luck with ANY package ever written >by an IBMer. To our surprise, the contents of the file appeared on the >screen! We were amazed. Then, we were even more amazed that there was no >option in Disk Repair to do anything with the data. We could see it but >we couldn't put it anywhere (like the other floppy drive). We couldn't >patch anything because some of the sectors on the floppy physically were >bad. So, we copied the data onto paper one sector at a time. You could have saved yourself a lot of work by using one of the many programs that can do screen capture. For example, SmartKey and Memory Shift can both capture a text screen. I guess this is kind of off the subject, huh? Well, to get back on it, ...no I haven't found any IBM software that was much good. But then, I don't like their hardware either! -- Tom Levin (The Robo-Programmer) {ihnp4|sdcrdcf|ttidca|scgvaxd|nrcvax| 1/2 man, 1/2 machine... jplpro|hoptoad |csun|quad1|bellcore| all hacker! logico|rdlvax}!psivax!tommie