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From: learn@igloo.UUCP
Newsgroups: alt.flame
Subject: listen up, microport, this is getting serious
Message-ID: <339@igloo.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 4-Dec-87 14:56:29 EST
Article-I.D.: igloo.339
Posted: Fri Dec  4 14:56:29 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 8-Dec-87 06:21:52 EST
Reply-To: learn@igloo.UUCP (william vajk)
Organization: igloo, Northbrook, IL
Lines: 59
Keywords: I abhor the thoughts of a lawsuit....but, class action


Ok, Microport, I've stood by with patience for a long time.

In January, when I first ordered from you, I was told there were no
compatibility problems, and when my package arrived, I found a bug 
report of known bugs, all promised to be fixed. Did the sales person
I talked to mention any bugs ? Of course not.

In November, I upgraded to 2.3. I skipped the intermediate steps as
a waste of time and money. Most of us paid for 'upgrades' several
times. And still, it does not work right.

Lots of stuff still broken, stuff like the ansi driver for the console,
stuff like uucp that even the add on honeydanber didn't fix.

Igloo is a usenet site. In order to receive a feed, only one modem
can be left on line, and the terminal must be abandoned, or the darn
thing exits with a slave failure with any screen display activity,
or users logging in. This is on an at clone at 8 mhz and 4 megs ram.
Today's partial feed took 1 hour 20 minutes at 2400 baud, during which
the machine was inaccessible. Things weren't any better when we were
only transferring mail, only the times were somewhat shorter.

There are other users out there equally having had it with a system
that does not work properly, and that after 9 months of incremental
fixes which have done nothing to fix some of the basics promised
of a unix system.

Oh boy, put a big feather in your cap, you fixed lots of stuff that
should never have been flawed from the start, like the incessant
panics. The panics, it seems, might have been fixed at the expense
of other processes.

As a successful company, it is time you were held accountable for
not providing what you have promised, the things we have paid for,
some of us several times over.

It is fortunate that so many microport users are gathered under a
single roof, so to speak, because we, the microport rapees have
a place to gather and demand restitution.

Any owners of microport, who have problems not fixed by microport,
please send e-mail to the author with details of what does not work
correctly.  We can negotiate a settlement in concert with microport, 
preferably to have the product finally fixed to resemble a reasonably 
operating system, or we can demand restitution in a class action suit.

It is obvious that microport needs more than a strong nudge to
do things right. With suitable damages that any just court
will surely award, we can purchase a truly working unix port
to our systems. I abhor the thoughts of a lawsuit, but there
seems no recourse. This action had to come sooner or later,
so it might just as well be now.

Please cc your information to karl@ddsw1.

Bill Vajk                                       e-mail learn@igloo

Disclaimers ? Microport should have thought of some. I need none.