From: dantonio@magick.enet.dec.com (David D'Antonio)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard
Subject: Re: A thought about Gravis delay
Date: 25 Sep 92 22:05:18 GMT
Article-I.D.: PA.1992Sep25.220518.21712
Reply-To: dantonio@flashy.tay2.dec.com
Organization: None to speak of...
Status: RO
X-Status: 


In article <1992Sep25.041535.4603@wam.umd.edu>, ys@wam.umd.edu writes:
|>In article <1992Sep24.202337.3279@philabs.philips.com> kkt@philabs.philips.com (Kim-Kiat Tan) writes:
|>>In article <1992Sep24.173829.11815@lclark.edu> harrison@lclark.edu (Mark Harrison) writes:
[...]
|>>	I don't know about you guy, at this point, I don't care how good the
|>>Gravis card is rumored to be. If I really want a sound card, I am not going to
|>>wait for the Gravis anymore. It boiled down to I don't know how much I can 
|>>believe what the company say except "it will be out next month", which is always
|>>true. So I am not going to wait for anything it say it's coming out soo.....n
|>>unless I really see it shipping.
|>
|>The fact is if they said back in March that their planned REAL release date
|>was say in Dec. 92, until then all the potential customers would have gone out
|>to buy a SB, SB Pro or PAS-16, and not waited. Yet since they have kept
|>saying it will be released any time, they have kept people waiting for months
|>and just got people upset and angry for them not keeping their words, which
|>in fact may have been a good marketing ploy, yet a blow to their reputation
|>in terms of their words.

Well, I called Gravis and surprise!, they deny this. But then, we all
expected that, right? The person I talked to said they were getting
over 1000 calls per day asking about this vapour-card. When I told him
that the general feeling on the 'net was that people are angry and
tired of excuses, he said that it wouldn't be released until it was
perfect. He also said that the prez of the company was flying back
from the developers with the final version of the software in hand and
that they would test it Monday and send it to the duplicators if they
didn't find any problems. So it SHOULD be out by the end of next week.

Yeah, right. Now, granted, it's late on a Friday after a long week of
not releasing this card, but I got the impression that this guy
couldn't really care less if I bought one or not. He said they have
people on Compu$erve and America On Line who would annouce when the
card was REALLY shipping, but again, he seemed to brush off the
Internet when I suggested they get connected [he said that they hadn't
been approached by the Internet! :-].

Instead of being even sympathetic, he seemed to justify what they'd
done by pointing out that very few software products came out on time.
Which is certainly true (can you say Falcon 3.0??), but last I heard
SH didn't do the "day at a time" release schedule, either.

They also seemed to understand that they were taking a major hit to
their credibility; I'm not sure what they could do at this point to
restore it, save for actually shipping the board, of course...

Anyway, the latest (unoffically) from Gravis is end of next week,
assuming all goes well Monday...

Any see that pig fly by?? :-)

DDA

--
dantonio@magick.tay2.dec.com -or- dantonio@sword1.enet.dec.com
  I've tried to dance with what life had to hand me
    My partner's been pleasure, my partner's been pain
				-Stevie Nicks


From dantonio@magick.tay2.dec.com  Ukn Sep 29 08:37:29 1992
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To: ultrasound%itchy@dsd.es.com (UltraSound Reflector)
Cc: David DeBry <ddebry@dsd.es.com>
Subject: Re: Info on Gravis Ultrasound shipping date 
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 92 11:33:13 -0400
From: "What the World needs now..." <dantonio@magick.tay2.dec.com>
X-Mts: smtp
Status: RO
X-Status: 


> Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard
> Path: orca!uunet!charon.amdahl.com!pacbell.com!iggy.GW.Vitalink.COM!cs.widener.edu!eff!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!spool.mu.edu!darwin.sura.net!convex!news.oc.com!spssig.spss.com!uchinews!quads!nbw1
> From: nbw1@quads.uchicago.edu (Benjamin I. Williams)
> Subject: Re: GRAVIS' FIXES DONE- SHIPPING THIS WEEK
> Message-Id: <1992Sep25.021414.17314@midway.uchicago.edu>
> Sender: news@uchinews.uchicago.edu (News System)
> Reply-To: nbw1@midway.uchicago.edu
> Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
> Date: Fri, 25 Sep 1992 02:14:14 GMT
> Lines: 32

> My dear friends, I do not wish for you to be deceived.  I am a reseller
> -and I checked from my supplyers, no less than 22 of them, and all of them
> say that Gravis will start shipping the boards to them on the date of
> October 20th.  I do not know where you get your information, but I have
> been doing business with these people for a little less than a decade,
> and I have never had any trouble, lyes, or cover-ups, especially when it
> comes to products.  Besides, with 22 distributers saying the date is either
> October 22th or the 22nd, Im sure that there is no doubt that it will be quite
> a while before the card is shipped.  I am taking back-orders for any
> soundcard that is popular in the news, (Sound Blaster 16 which will be in
> stock next week or two, and the Gravis Ultrasound - will be shipped by
> my company (WCOM Systems) 3 days after in stock).  

I called Gravis and, just for the record, they state that they don't even
HAVE 20 distributors. They also CLAIMED (according to a VP of Marketing so
you can take it for what it's worth :-), that the prez of the company was
flying back from New York (the SB emulator software is being done by the
3rd party) with the latest/greatest and they would test it Monday, and send
to the disk duplicators today (Tuesday) and it should be "shipped" by
Friday.

Now, I don't really BELIEVE this (at this point, I won't believe anything
until I see it in the store), but that's the offical word from Gravis as of
last week.

DDA






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Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.soundcard