From: mg@elan (Michael Golan)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.misc
Subject: Re: I found IBM's plans on *Prodigy* of all places! (long)
Date: 27 Jul 92 17:20:02 GMT
Organization: Princeton University, Dept. of Computer Science

jemenake@zeus.calpoly.edu (Joe Emenaker) writes:

>Here's a copy of a posting I found on Prodigy which apparently came from a
>file called IBMPLANS.ZIP. The person who posted it opined that it was from
>IBM.

>THEN, they tried doing
>the same thing while running XCOPY in a DOS window in the background.
>OS/2's time went up by 67% to 15 seconds. Windows' time skyrocketed by over
>500% to 44 seconds.

But window's XCOPY doesnt have a bug that makes it hang, at least...
It's interesting they choose one of the buggy OS2 utils to test it ...

>[******** TEXT FILE BEGINS *******]

IBM flames follow - not of the original poster ...

>OS/2 QUALITY                                                
>OS/2 -- A QUALITY SUCCESS STORY                             


H    H    AAAAA
H    H   A     A
HHHHHH   AAAAAAA			???????????
H    H   A     A
H    H   A     A


>                                                            
> To produce the best possible quality product, a new development process
>was instituted for OS/2 2.0.  This new process included small, empowered
>development teams and an unprecedented beta test program involving 30,000
>users.

They forgot to tell you: beta testers never saw the final release, and QA
people were removed :-) The last change to the software was 48 hrs before
they sent the diskettes to the copier...

Beta of a completely different version (ie pre-WPS, pre-seamless) is 
meaningless. QA must have been the poorest of any IBM product ever. I
heard IBM'er claim a product typically goes to QA for months after
it is finished and freezed. OS2 ?

>                                                            
>BUGS                                                        
>                                                            
>OS/2 2.0 consists of about 3.5 million lines of code. 

so? so it has less bugs than OS/360 ? thats a success?!
what does the total number of lines (which is too big, anyway) has to
do with it? its not like its a 3.5mil line program, i.e the command VIEW
is an independent buggy program, right? So is XCOPY...

>Since we began
>shipping, fewer than 10% of our users have called the OS/2 Support Line.
>More than 75% of these calls are usage, installation, and setup questions.

You mean 25% of 10% or one in every 40 users see a REAL BUG AND CALLS?
That means one in every 20 people encounter a real problem, or worse!
That's horrible!! That's quality failure. MS C compiler 6.0 comes to mind...

>We have identified approximately 50 issues that are causing these calls.
>(Not all are bugs.  Some are for specific device support that we did not
>intend to include until later releases, but we're now working on due to
>customer interest.)

This seems to imply that IBM found less than 50 bugs! I found more myself!
MS, you want to hire me to take shots at IBM's sh***y software QA?


>About 20 can cause a major function to be
>impacted, but the system continues to work, albeit with an inconvenient
>workaround.

Oh come on, I have to boot OS2 at least once a day, or it goes nuts.
Thats about as good as my DV/DOS setup was, and thats not good enough.

[No I dont have any hardware problems, don't tell me its my hardware. I know
a little about software to tell, for sure, that all these problems are
software related. MY vanilla 386/33 8M ESDI310M ATI vantage work fine thankyou]
                                                            
>The remaining 25 or so are inconveniences which affect enough customers that
>we have made them a priority. An example is failing to recognize that a
>window has been closed prior to Shutdown.  Upon reboot, the window is open
>and the user would have to click the mouse button twice to close it again.

An example is WPS going nuts forcing you to waste time re-botting. When you
reboot, the screen goes blank, and you need to reboot again, upon which
all is fine. If this isn't a serious severe problem, I cant imagine what is.
At least with UAE, dos boots quickly...

>SERVICE STRATEGY                                            
>                                                            
>We are continuing to work these problems in priority sequence and have
>posted a number of fixes on COMPUSERVE, OS/2 BBS, and Internet

Is this the same strategy for sending OS2 1.3->2.0 upgrades? LIFO ? 
i.e Least Important bug First out ? (No I didnt upgrade, but the stories!)

>In the fall there will be a Performance and Service Pack which will include
>all available fixes plus some performance enhancements.  The Pack will be
>available either electronically or on diskettes for a nominal charge

Thank god. But if it only includes the currently availble fixes, and IBM
claims that the rest is just a 'minor issue', I am going to buy the NT SDK
and take a look...

>ADDITIONAL INFORMATION                                      
>                                                            
>FIXES CURRENTLY ON COMPUSERVE
>o Can't install MFM/RLL (older family 1) disk drives
>o If the swapper file expands to a partition boundary, it won't shrink
>  again until system reboot.
>o Some Western Digital chip sets can hang during system install
>o Some Tseng chip sets in SVGA mode experience display corruption going to
>  and from a full screen Virtual DOS Machine
>o Intermittent trap in the Win OS/2 session after exiting WIN-OS/2 on
>  4MB systems.
>                                                            

These are minor problems indeed. What about all the other crashes/problems?


I don't notice    OS2 being a bit slower

I don't care      having to live with some bugs

I don't mind      to wait a bit for fixes, these is indeed a complex new system

I do mind         not seeing major problems fixed in 4 months.

I mind very much  that IBM seems to ignore the problems and report 'success'.

What Can I say about OS2 now? Its a fantatic buggy program. pun intendend.

 Michael Golan
 mg@princeton.edu