From: mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us (Marc Unangst)
Subject: Re: Why is Supra able to sell?
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 05:35:43 GMT
Organization: The Programmer's Pit Stop, Ann Arbor MI

In article <1992Nov16.114600.13310@phillip.edu.au> t9114145@phillip.edu.au writes:
>Hypothesis: People who write for magazines generally use lots of different 
>products and can make things work even if the manual doesn't spell it out.

On the contrary, my experience with magazine reviewers is that they
typically do not have the patience to spend a lot of time getting
something to work.  The poor review of the Telebit T2500 in PC
Magazine a year or so ago shows exactly this -- the Telebit wasn't
quite as easy to set up as the other modems, so they slammed it
because they couldn't get it to work.  Never mind that they didn't
make the effort necessary to get it working; if they couldn't set it
up in 15 minutes simply by reading the quick-reference card, then it
obviously was defective.

This is, perhaps, good for the buying community who is also similarly
impatient and ignorant.  But I'm personally much more interested in
how a product works once you've got it set up properly than in how
easy it might be to set up.  You only have to set it up once,
typically, but you have to use it much longer than that.

(Tangent alert)
This has always been one of my beefs with PC CMOS setup programs that
have fancy text-windows interfaces and menus.  How many times do you
run your CMOS setup program over the life of the computer?  Twice?
Three times?  Maybe ten if you change your configuration frequently?
And on-line context-sensitive help?  Or several different configurable
color schemes?  In a CMOS setup program?  What a total and complete
waste of time...
(Tangent alert off)

>Basically I don't understand how some people have stuffed things up to the
>extent that they report here.

Well, you must not use the modem for the same thing most of us do.  My
modem is connected to a PC running Unix.  It's on all the time, and in
service probably 50% of the time it's on.  My system both dials out
and receives calls on that line.  My system is also unattended for a
good part of the day.  I have had problems with the Supra locking up
after disconnecting from a call (and yes, I have the new 1.2J ROMs).
When I called Supra, they offered me three choices: 1) Send the modem
back and let them work on it or send me another one; 2) Pay $20 and
get a cross-ship RMA; or 3) Have them send me another set of ROMs to
try, on the theory that this set was defective.  Choice (1) is
unacceptable, since as I mentioned above the modem is in use for a
good part of the day; I can't go without it for the two weeks it might
take to get it back.  (2) is unacceptable because the modem is still
under warranty, and at no time since I bought the modem has it worked
perfectly; there's no reason why I should pay $20 for the privilege of
something that is free with every other vendor in the industry.  And I
doubt (3) will fix the problem, since I ran the ROM self-tests and the
modem believes that the ROM is correct.

My PC has uptimes in the 7 to 20 day range.  When it goes down, it's
usually because I need to install a hardware upgrade or boot a new
kernel, not because it crashed.  (For example, right now the machine
hasn't been rebooted since sometime on November 10th; that was for a
memory upgrade.)  I expect the same kind of stability from my modems.
Maybe people who are used to their PC crashing several times a day
don't have a problem with a modem that does the same; I do.

-- 
Marc Unangst, N8VRH         | "There are two ways to solve this problem:
mju@mudos.ann-arbor.mi.us   | the hard way, and the easy way.  Let's start
                            | with the hard way."
                            |   - W. Scheider, from a Physics lecture