Points all well taken, Don. I think we agree that the product isn't quite ready for prime time, but shows enormous potential. And the procedures you are following to protect the integrity of your system are exactly those that one would normally follow in a beta test mode. Yet they are quite out of the ordinary for "normal" users, so they can easily get themselves into trouble--as we observe here. This is why beta testing programs frequently qualify their participants, to be sure that the costs of supporting them (or sucking up their frustration) do not exceed the benefits they provide to the development process.
The point is that there is something of an information vacuum, which experienced users/beta testers like you are valiantly attempting to fill. Others fill it with their desire and imagination. For better or for worse, I am trying to do so by reference to normal software testing and development procedures--hence my questions.
The underlying issue is--what is the basic development trajectory of the product, and how is it being pursued? What are the priorities and objectives? What is the time frame? Obviously, there are very serious bugs in the code, bugs that trash users' partitions in the worst case, and impair functionality in many cases. Yet before those bugs are ironed out, new, complex features are added, like Coherence, which contribute their own set of problems, even while they fire the imagination.
All this is quite confusing even to an IT professional, and to judge from the remarks of users, to them as well--especially in the absence of clarification from the company. I recognize that there are proprietary issues, and that no one wants to promise more than they can deliver--quite the opposite. But a better general sense of how things are likely to go would be reassuring and helpful, both to us professional geeks, and to ordinary users.
Meanwhile, in the background, we hear rumblings from good old VMWare, with its solid financing, excellent reputation in the corporate and business markets, and an established family of robust, proven products. Companies like mine are relatively price insensitive; but we cannot afford high support costs or lots of down time. At the end of the day, it isn't necessarily the most technically sophisticated product that wins--witness Microsoft.
That said, I want to back the plucky new kid on the block. But I also want to get the sense that the kid will back me as well, by providing the information I (and I venture to say others) need to make good decisions.
Anyway, sorry for blathering on off topic. I continue to hope that the developers would see fit to answer my previous questions, which are posed with all the best intent for the community.
Click to expand...