Actually, I like this better than "We'll release the code, buggy or not,
by X date." Livingscent did that on their web page with a March 31
announcement for v.90 which they retracted about 4:30 PM on March 30.
Many of our customers saw the announcement, and we believed it simply
_because_ Livingscent had never released dates before. so we assumed,
"Hey, they're very, very confident of this. It must be working well
in closed betas, and for them to announce a date, it has to be good."
I don't know who it was within the company that made the announcement
on the web page, but I'd be willing to wager that it was a marketroid
and not a programmer or engineer.
And, up until then, for the most part each ComOS release has been better
than its predecessor. You can bet they're suffering from the fallout
from pushing b15 out the door too soon.
> They've always been like this since I've bought equipment from them, I
> appreciate the candor and would rather wait and have my clients wait for
> solid code than to do a flavor of the month/week like Ascend (no
> reflection on you Kevin ;)
Agreed. Although Livingscent flavors seem to get better with each release,
when they don't rush things.
> Realize that ISPs are NOT their entire business, so they must cater to the
> markets that they have targetted, whatever that may be. Many on the list
> are ISPs, so it appears disproportional when we post here about the trials
> and tribulations that we may have.
I would suspect that ISPs are the lion's share of their PM3 customers.
> Pretty much if you don't like it, buy something else... Lucent RABU will
> not bend over if they don't consider it worth the manpower to work on some
> issues and on other issues they are putting their best effort, but that
> can still take time.
>
> Bleeding edge is for risk-takers and if you want to do such that is your
> prerogative. Do NOT force your philosophy on another company however that
> does have a history of solid reliable products.
Agreed, and our customers understand that. Granted, there are some
impatient speed-freak customers that live and die by the number displayed
in the DUN dialog box at the beginning of a session. But, overall the
difference between a typical 31.2 analog connection and a typical 44K
PCM connection isn't all that overwhelming, and most customers are willing
to be reasonable when the bleeding-edge nature is explained to them.
I am puzzled about some of the begavior of the b15 release. It certainly
seems unusual that adding a PCM protocol would so seriously affect
throughput and stability of v.34 modems. However I'm not a DSP coder,
nor could I ever hope to play one on TV.
Take your time, Livingscent. Make improvements, add features, but not
if they break things that you've made work so well.
Marketroids will always create time pressures. The real problem we're
beginning to see is that new modem buyers are finding it harder to get
K56Flex hardware, meaning that v.90 is what's on the shelf for the client
side. And _that_ is creating real-world time pressure for stable v.90
server-side code.
-- Jay Hennigan jay@west.net 805-884-6323 --
WestNet: Internet service to Santa Barbara, Ventura and the world.
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