cyliao@hardy.u.washington.edu (Chun-Yao Liao) (09/21/90)
Just a quick note for people looking for upgrade their cube.
I called NeXT to see when we'll get our upgrade, the answer
was Nov 1st. The lady said all promised educational upgrades
will be send to institutions on Nov 1st. She said it with
a confident voice so I believe that we can trust this date.
cyliao@wam.umd.edu o NeXT : I put main frame power on two chips.
@epsl.umd.edu o people: We put main flame power on two guys.
@bagend.eng.umd.edu o ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
xxxxx@xxxxx.xxx.xxx (reserved) o RC + Apple // + Classic Music + NeXT = cyliaoanderson@sapir.cog.jhu.edu (Stephen R. Anderson) (02/13/91)
Since I've done my share of bitching and moaning about how long my upgrade order was taking, I guess I owe it to NeXT to mention that it arrived yesterday. And after making some efforts to track things, I see that the delay was at least in part due to paper-pushing beyond NeXT's control. Chronology: 30 October, 1990: firesale cube from BLand arrives. tell secretary to order upgrade. 6 November: Secretary actually calls purchasing office to place upgrade order. 16 November: Purchasing office actually gets PO prepared. This must go to U of Maryland Computer Emporium, our nearest "hub" outlet. Computer Emporium tells JHU purchasing that they will not accept order over the phone. 26 November: Official date of order on Computer Emporium forms. 6 December: Computer Emporium has enough orders accumulated to warrant a call to NeXT to actually place order. Note that well over a month has passed since I thought I had placed the order (and since my grant budget was debited by the cost of the upgrades). [...time passes...] ca. 10 January, 1991: photocopy of letter from S. Jobs arrives, assuring all that "higher education is our highest priority" but making no specific promise about when upgrades might arrive. Serious grumbling ensues. [...more time...] 5 February, : upgrades (both OS2.0 and '040) arrive from NeXT at Computer Emporium. 7 February: shipped via UPS to me 12 February: UPS delivery arrives, ca. 15 seconds after I send note to person from NeXT [who had contacted me offering to do what he could to expedite things] telling him that I understand it's on its way. So, from my point of view it took about 3 1/2 months, but of that time less than 2 months was actually NeXT's responsibility. Not fantastic, but not something to complain about in exaggerated terms. So herewith my apologies. I did the OS upgrade right away last night, and I was really impressed. Having suffered through upgrading Suns since even before there was "suninstall," the last time I did this I thought Sun had finally gotten their installation program into reasonably usable shape. Sure, you have to save all those locally configured files, and then figure out how to do the essentially mechanical task of merging the information back into the new version, but the rest of the install went pretty smoothly (in going to 4.1.1). But now I see, thanks to NeXT's 2.0 upgrade, that it really is possible to automate the upgrade process. I know, the two aren't the same, but the extent of the differences between NeXT 1.0 and 2.0 seem quite comparable to those between Sun 4.0.3 and 4.1.1. NeXT seems to have done a really clean job of facilitating the upgrade process - something you may not appreciate if your experience is with PC's and macs, but something that you'll know saves a lot of wasted time if you're used to doing your own system administration for real computers. Sorry this is so long, since there's no reason to think anyone (except me) cares. But I thought I owed NeXT some kinder words. Steve Anderson