re sgi sales practices was crimson was kubota announcement in qjrec qem network ucsd edu spl ivem ucsd edu steve lamont writes what i am annoyed about is the fact that we were led to believe that we would be able to upgrade to a multiprocessor version of the crimson without the assistance of a fork lift truck it should have been made fairly clear that the most crimson would ever get was a old style mhz cpu upgrade certainly this was mentioned on comp sys sgi on more than one occasion as being likely if our sales folks were saying otherwise they were either confused or less than honest ethical or somebody further up the chain inside sgi was misleading them i m also annoyed about being sold several personal irises at a previous site on the understanding that architecture would be around for a while rather than being flushed there were versions although admittedly the came out at the same time as the over a period of years the chassis simply couldn t be pushed any further i d say years was a pretty good lifespan myself for a system design in this day and age getting the to work caused a lot of gray hairs in both the hardware and product design groups we would have been out of our minds to push it further and i know that was made clear almost from the day the started shipping we had one last kicker in the form of the elan graphics which made graphics versions over its lifespan which i also think is pretty good now i understand that sgi is responsible to its investors and has to keep showing a positive quarterly bottom line odd that i found myself pressured on at least two occasions to get the business on the books just before the end of the quarter but i m just a little tired of getting boned in the process please by all means send a complaint letter through sgi support or sales on your concerns there should be no reason for sales folks to misrepresent future upgrades to customers sure sometimes there will be confusion for a while over whether an upgrade will be available but that shouldn t last too long and doesn t seem to be what you are referring to yes the sales folks do get bonus s at the end of some all quarters but that is pretty common industry wide and sometimes that can result in good deals for customers sometimes it probably pushes folks into systems that aren t what they need i m sure but nobody is forcing you to buy at end of quarter after all maybe it s because my lab buys sgis in onesies and twosies so we aren t entitled to a peek under the covers as the big kids nasa for instance are this lab and i suspect that a lot of other labs they don t get all that long a lead time either although certainly they get presentations on possible new products and their opinions may well influence the end product but that also is life in the industry we can t design systems that meet just their needs or we won t sell too many systems after all which is not to say that we don t have some niche products like reality engine and organizations doesn t have a load of money to spend on computers every year so we can t be out buying new systems on a regular basis the boxes that we buy now will have to last us pretty much through the entire grant period of five years and in some case beyond that means that i need to buy the best piece of equipment that i can when i have the money not some product that was built to paraphrase one previous poster s words to fill a niche to compete with some other vendor i m going to be looking at this box for the next five years and every time i look at it i m going to think about sgi and how i could have better spent my money actually your money since we re supported almost entirely by federal tax dollars but surely you don t expect a system you buy now for a five year period to be constantly upgradable over that entire five year period that s a rather unreasonable expectation in my experience with workstations microcomputers supported and parts available yes but certainly not upgradable to the latest and greatest now you ll have to pardon me while i go off and hiss and fume in a corner somewhere and think dark libelous thoughts i missed your first posting but as i say by all means share your frustation with somebody at a level inside sgi where it might have an effect not immediate i m sure but complaints aren t going to be ignored and may affect future plans if we hear similar things from more than one person site all of the above is as usual my personal opinion not sgi s let no one tell me that silence gives consent dave olson because whoever is silent dissents silicon graphics inc maria isabel barreno olson sgi com ps i start my sabbatical may ask those questions now
