stevem@pserv.CFSMO.Honeywell.COM (Steve Mestad) (11/16/90)
After spending over 3 hours trying to make tcio work properly under hpux 7.0 on a series 300 for multiple tape archives on a 9144 drive, I ask myself (and now many others) "WHY DOES HP INSIST ON GOING BACKWARDS?" In particular, I cite the following: 1) Tcio keeps getting broke in alternate releases. A tape utility that can't work in background for multiple tapes is USELESS! (Yes, i know about the -T option, it doesn't work) HP also "fixed" tcio on the 500's a long time ago that way. 2) The system management program requires an HP terminal again. Tying software to a vendor specific terminal under Unix has been a big NONO for a long time. HP fixed this problem under 6.0 a long time ago, but brought it back again under 7.0. (The system mgmt program I am referring to is now SAM but used to be reconfig. BTW, why did the program increase from about 250k to about 6 meg?) 3) I recently received a few more manual updates. Instead of the usual 3 ring binder style, these were the glued spine type binding. I know HP is "experimenting" with that syle on "the brick" (the heavily used Unix reference manual sections), but now they apparently have expanded it to other manuals as well. Seeing others express the same view as I am now, why is HP insisting on using the one binding style that a large body of users has clearly stated is a royal pain? Surely a spiral bound or the plastic comb style binding is not that much more expensive and yet has nearly all of the benefits of 3 rings. 4) HP's switch on cartridge tape labels was really the pits. Not only is the newer label unremovable (even floppy labels are removable and have been for quite some time) but about 1/2 of the label surface is not available for notes as it is taken up by HP advertising. 5) Why were the printer scheduling routines so badly munged going to 7.0? I lost a large amount of time troubleshooting a problem with lpsched only to find it was all caused by a shell variable called LANG. Also, I had to modify several printing routines because the user lp can no longer submit a print job. None of the problems existed previous to 6.5. (BTW I do like the lpana concept. It would be really useful if the statistics it generated were real numbers. I highly doubt the users got their print jobs before they were submitted as suggested by the negative wait time numbers.) Oh yea, is there any particular reason that lpsched core dumps and generates an outputq file that can grow to 1/2 meg or larger? 6) HP's update routine works pretty well. However, the install routine is really the pits. (Yes, I know they are one and the same.) I installed 7.0 from scratch on a system as was quite surprised at the state of chaos the system was left in. It even had multiple core dumps during the boot process. Although I detest Sun's update process (I really don't care for any routine that requires my disk to be newfs'ed) it installs from scratch better than anyone's. 7) Any particular reason that yppasswdd goes bonkers and messes up my passwd source files under 7.0? Not only does it occassionally run away doing mysterious things, but it also has generated multiple entries for users in the source files. Didnt have a problem with it under 6.5. I could go on but I think I have made my point. Many of these items used to work very well, were not broke and hardly needed fixing. Yet, someone messed with something that worked and made it worse, unacceptable, or unusable. If it were an infrequent occurrance, I could understand it has being a slip up that shouldn't have gotten out. However, I get the feeling this problem is an increasing trend. I also do not feel that items that have been problems in the past (and still are) are getting addressed at all. (E.g. bug fixes, Response Center, lead times, maintenance contracts, cross development software support.) Come on HP, get with the program. I don't think my expectations for your products are either out of line or not reprentative of what the market wants/needs. If HP can't meet my needs, you better believe I will get them met elsewhere. (I recently installed about $250,000 of Sun gear and another order for $250,000 is going out the door. It wasn't that long ago that HP's name was on nearly all of the orders written here.) If someone out there can actually DO something to fix these problems, I would love to hear from you. (Don't send me a survey or a sales rep, I have enough headaches to deal with. Besides, I said most of this on a survey years ago.) Steve Mestad stevem@cfsmo.honeywell.com stevem%pserv@src.honeywell.com (if the above still isnt right)