cmacaskl@gehenna (Chris McAskill) (04/25/91)
In article <HARDY.91Apr23220014@golem.ps.uci.edu> hardy@golem.ps.uci.edu (Meinhard E. Mayer (Hardy)) made some good points: > Since your complaining seems to have drawn some action, here is one > from another recent NeXT-convert who needs some convincing that he > made the right choice: I can't get most of my output printed properly > via the serial port (either from dvips, or Writenow, or the Librarian, > or SoftPC). NeXT admits that an upgrade to 2.1 would solve the problem > (and Insignia tells me the same) but our Campus has not gotten the > upgrade diskettes. How about placing the distribution on some Archive > site? We'd like to place it on some archive site, and we certainly recognize that it would make life easier. Unfortunately, this update software contains code from several of our third party partners. Our legal agreements with them permit a single copy of the update product to be distributed amongst persons only if they are in the same organization. Please note that this does not hold for all software products in general. All machines within the same organization may use a single Update Set to upgrade to 2.1 provided that the purchaser of all the machines and the single Update Set are the same. Thus a corporation and a university need only buy a single Update Set for all their employees. Individual purchasers who happen to work at a corporation or university will need to buy individual Update Sets. Sorry for the hassles. Chris MacAskill cmac@next.com .. Gettin' my flame suit on ...
joe@mathcs.emory.edu (Joe Christy) (04/25/91)
In article <562@rosie.NeXT.COM> cmacaskl@gehenna (Chris McAskill) writes: ... citations and reasoinable explanation of NeXT policy deleted ... >All machines within the same organization may use a single Update Set to >upgrade to 2.1 provided that the purchaser of all the machines and the single >Update Set are the same. Thus a corporation and a university need only buy a >single Update Set for all their employees. Individual purchasers who happen to >work at a corporation or university will need to buy individual Update Sets. > >Sorry for the hassles. > >Chris MacAskill >cmac@next.com > >.. Gettin' my flame suit on ... This would seem to indicate that the 2.1 update actually exists. Is there anyone out there who can reliably confirm this? At the MIT microcomputer center they are very conservative and won't order anything that exists only as vapor. As someone whose research depends heavily on floating point calculations, I've tried quite hard over the past month to get the 2.1 update. Between the folks at MIT micro and myself we've called NeXT, both in Boston and in Redwood City about a dozen times, to no avail. Sure the flak catchers at 1-800-848-NeXT will give you a part number, but no one will attest to the update really being available. No one on the net seems to have been able to lay their hands on one. When I was at CalTech last week I determined that they hadn't seen any and had no idea when they would. The Boston NeXT sales reps don't have any information about when the updates will emerge into reality, nor any hard data about what files are affected. One of them did offer to loan me a full 2.1 OD, if I was willing to do a complete BuildDisk and restore my hard disk from backups, but I haven't been able in the last three weeks to track him down and get the disk. It's great that NeXT is busy selling new machines, I just wish that they could devote some energy to helping those with older ones. It would be wonderful if someone knowledgeable at NeXT would say something about when the 2.1 update will ship (you know that comp.sys.next will reveal the truth about who gets them first and when) and provide a detailed list of the affected files. Anyone with access to both 2.0 and 2.1 could at least generate a list of changed system files with ls -l and diff applied to the system directories. Frustratedly, Joe Joe Christy | joe@math.bu.edu 17 Service Drive | Dept. of Math. Wellesley, MA 02181 | Boston University (617) 431-1680 | 111 Cummington St. joe@suzette.UUCP | Boston, MA 02215 -- Joe Christy | joe@mathcs.emory.edu | Time flies like an Emory University | {rutgers,gatech}!emory!joe | arrow, fruit flies Dept of Math and CS | joe@emory.bitnet | like bananas. Atlanta, GA 30322 | Phone: (404) 727-7956 |
joe@mathcs.emory.edu (Joe Christy) (04/26/91)
Sometimes dealing with NeXT is like working with a Missouri mule,
you have to hit them over the head with 2x4 to get their attention.
Once you have it they are very accomodating. I got mail from
Chris MacAskill, and this afternoon a call from Doug Peters of the
NeXT Boston office who got me a copy of the 2.1 update. Remarkably
enough the anomolous behavior I was seeing in my programs disappeared
with the new floating point libraries.
Contentedly,
Joe
Joe Christy | joe@math.bu.edu
17 Service Drive | Dept. of Math.
Wellesley, MA 02181 | Boston University
(617) 431-1680 | 111 Cummington St.
joe@suzette.UUCP | Boston, MA 02215
[I can't post from math.bu.edu, so please excuse the bogus .sig below]
--
Joe Christy | joe@mathcs.emory.edu | Time flies like an
Emory University | {rutgers,gatech}!emory!joe | arrow, fruit flies
Dept of Math and CS | joe@emory.bitnet | like bananas.
Atlanta, GA 30322 | Phone: (404) 727-7956 |