[TenTec] Re: TenTec Digest, Vol 18, Issue 61

[Bill Tippett <btippett@alum.mit.edu>]

W4BQF wrote:
>This is similar to statistics, which as you know, can be configured to
produce any results you want! If you have daily IE crashes with WinXP, in
all probability you have a problem with some other software that you have on
your PC. I am not an IT expert, but I have four home made PC's and one
purchased PC, all of which run WinXP Pro. Since installing WinXP Pro on
these machines I have not had a single operating system crash and two of the
PC's had XP installed when XP was first released.

        XP itself does NOT crash (requiring a full reboot), but IE locks
up, all open IE windows close and then I must reopen IE from the desktop.
This is a minor annoyance but is more bothersome to me than Orion crashes
which happen much less frequently (almost 5 months without one now).  It
seems to me that IE under XP must be the MOST common application and I'm
surprised this problem continues several years after XP's release.

>However the more obvious comparison you did not make is that each of the 119
times you updated WinXP, how many times did it create another problem with
the operating system. With the Orion it certainly seems that each time there
is an update, something is certainly fixed, but something else certainly
goes wrong. To me, this says Ten Tec's beta test program is a complete
failure.

        There is no way I can know about XP updates creating other problems.
Since there are were 119 updates, it would not surprise me at all if some
XP updates created problems elsewhere, or at best were incomplete solutions.
As AA6E observed, the vast majority of XP updates seem to be security issues.
I'm no IT expert, but security seems like a VERY obvious problem which should
be thoroughly tested before releasing any new OS (maybe equivalent to Orion's
OS having on-the-air crashes).  After all, crashes and reboots are a problem
that just waste the user's time, but security is an issue that could have far
more serious consequences (financial, identity theft, etc).

        I agree that Orion's Beta test program could be better since some 
of us
may be using Orion in ways that may be more benign than you are.  Why not
volunteer to be a Beta tester?  I'm quite sure Gary would be happy to have
you.

                                                73,  Bill  W4ZV

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