Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 00:05:40 -0500 (EST)
From: Evan Leibovitch <evan@telly.org>
To: caldera-users@rim.caldera.com
Subject: Re: COL 1.2 Upgrade

On Mon, 23 Feb 1998, John Koyle wrote:

> Any Beta testers here???  Evan, what do you think, I believe you tested it??

Yup. I'm very, very happy with the new product. If I read this right, the
price of standard has dropped in half for the same stuff (pricing wasn't
an issue to discuss during beta testing). That's pretty incredible IMO.

The new COL is packed with so much stuff that it now comes on two CDs. The
second one includes KDE, BRU and StarOffice 4 (which many say is a big
improvement over previous versions, I've been a WordPerfect bigot but I'll
give SO some time now that it's the 'official' Caldera office suite).

Now that the thing is released (I received a full production copy today),
I can say my piece without breaking my beta-tester vows. I won't comment
on problems I reported in the beta program, until I load the production
release and see whether they've been dealt with. 

- There are no earth-shattering changes to COL itself. Packages are newer
  (and thus more mature and/or featureful), the installation is more
  detailed and now has more options (languages, network install, etc.)
  but nobody familiar with 1.1 will find much surprising.

- 1.2 is, in the scheme of things, what the release number indicates;
  a point-release upgrade. Not even the box or manuals are different,
  the only difference in documentation is an addendum that replaces
  the original manual's installation instructions.

  This leads to the issue of the upgrade pricing. Is the 1.2 Base
  a significant enough upgrade to make users essentially re-buy the
  package (especially when so many of the updated packages are currently
  downloadable?

  Is the ownership of a previous version of Base or Standard only worth
  $50 credit on the new Standard? I don't want to address this further
  until I speak with others at Caldera, but I fully understand why some
  are steamed at this.

- The use of the existing manual and addendum means that no obvious
  notice is given where versions of software in 1.2 operate differently
  from their 1.1 predecessor. For instance, COL 1.2 uses BIND 8, whose
  configuration is different from COL 1.1's. While there exists a tool to
  convert named.boot to named.config, it's poorly documented and I predict
  it will be the cause of at least a few headaches and support calls.

  (Consider this a suggestion for the very first entry in the COL 1.2
  Usage Notes file...)

- There were some other things considered for the beta documentation
  that didn't make it into production. I hope they *do* make it to the
  online help system.

Anyway, that's my piece for now, until I lead the production 1.2
release ...

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Evan Leibovitch * Xunil Computing * Brampton, Ontario, Canada * www.xunil.com
 Supporting Intel-based Unix and Linux since 1985 * Caldera & SCO authorized
         "Windows 95 is a walking antitrust violation" -- Bryan Sparks