sean@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU (Sean McLinden) (08/21/87)
Back in February there appeared a review of Vadic 9600 VP modems which seemed reasonably fair. I would now hove to say that after 5 months experience I could not reasonably recommend these modems to anyone considering dialup high-speed capablilty. Reasons are: 1. The effective throughput with error correction enabled is closer to 2400 bps (or less). With standard file transfer protocols such as Kermit it is even less (to be fair, this is documented in the manual, though not in the advertising). 2. Customer support is nearly non-existent. I have logged nearly two hours of telephone "hold" time waiting for a tech support person who never got on the line. 3. Most of the really useful parameters are NOT programmable from the front panel. What IS programmable from the front panel is generally NOT things that you are likely to change on a day-to-day basis. What this means is that if you are hooked up to something like a multiplexor, you are constantly having to disconnect the modem and attach to a terminal in order to change simple settings. 4. The number of options that you are given is such that a trial and error approach to option setting (which would make as much sense as trying to glean something from the documentation), would have you testing nearly 200 possible configurations (eliminating those that are clearly not useful). We have been dealing with Vadic products for nearly seven years but never have I been so frustrated with a product or with a vendor's lack of customer responsiveness as I have with this product. Sean McLinden Decision Systems Laboratory University of Pittsburgh (412) 648-9600