I manage the beta program at Livingston, therefore, I would
like to address to your concerns about the delay of our products.
>1) ChoiceNet -- nonexistent, promised, what, May?
ChoiceNet does exist. We're about to release another version
of ChoiceNet beta within a week or so. Please let me know if you
want to test this product.
>2) RADIUS 2.0 -- waiting on docs...
The software and the doc were done last week. I sent both the software
and the doc to our RADIUS beta sites to test and review one more time
before releasing them. RADIUS 2.0 and RADIUS Admin Guide will be
available on our ftp site next week. The CD will be available
couple weeks after that.
>3) The Livingston budget priced ISDN modem for the PC -- in PC week in
>December '95? due in March or so? Something like that.
This product is current on hold because of the chip problem. That's why
we removed the product from our web until further notice.
>4) PM3's. Has anybody actually seen one? Not really fair given short
>notice, but given past track record, seems justifiable to include it.
I hope that lots of you on this news group would say yes to this
question as we displayed the PM3 on various tradeshows. You
can also see one on display this week at the Internet Expo
in Boston. Certainly, a bulk of our beta sites have seen and tested
the product since last five weeks.
>5) OSPF -- I have mail from a Livingston VP promising this in '95 --
>somehow I doubt '96.
Again, this is another active beta product that I manage. Not a day
gone by that I don't get calls from our customers wanting to test this
product. We're about to have another beta version next week. Since OSPF
is a very complicated product, we certainly want to test it thouroughly
before releasing it.
As you can see, we have quite a few products that are current
in beta. Unlike most companies just releasing products with bugs
and insufficient documents, we just want to make sure that
when we release the product, it's not only bugs free, but also
has sufficient document for it. Perhaps, this process takes
a little longer than you would like. However, we won't lower
our releasing standard so that the product can get out of the door.
I hope that you would appreciate our high standard in a long run.
>
>I'm pretty happy with what I have Livingston-wise, but I kind of bet the
>farm on Livingston product, and the what appears to be ever increasing
>vaporware has me a bit concerned.
We appreciate your support hope that you would continue to address
your concerns to us. We certainly want to hear them.
>
>Heck, I was an all livingston shop until a while ago, when numerous
>problems with the IRX showed up, and I had no choice but to move to
>another router vendor. (Have several IRX's for sale now... Want one?)
Did you report the IRX problems to our technical support before
taking this drastic step of selling the product?
>
>I can see this potential problem arising with T1/PRI issues with the PM3.
>Will it actually appear in usable form this year? Or do I have to bite
>the bullet and buy Ascend? Because whatever I do, I ain't switching back,
>and I really, really, really want to buy Livingston.
The above statement is purely a speculation. Out of 19 beta sites
that I have for the PM3, none of them reported any problems with
the T1/PRI issues. As a matter of fact, in the first three weeks
of beta, none of the beta sites has any action items for engineering.
Currently, most of our PM3 beta sites are mainly performing
interoperability testing for us.
>
>
>I suppose I could point out a few other problems, like take the cables for
>the PM25, the connector that goes on the PM didn't even have the screws
>molded in straight, and so on the back of my PM, you can only screw in one
>side or the other, because the cable screw heads off to parts unknown.
>
>Then one of them had the plastic head just spinning on the screw so it was
>near impossible to thumb-tighten.
>
>Then one could point out the junior-high shop project mounting racks for
>the PM2E-10-30 line, with what can only be described as a pathetic racking
>scheme. I have piles of these sitting around too if you want some, plain
>rack shelves work better.
I don't know the details of the hardware problems that you described
above so I cannot address them. However, I'll find out from
manufacturing though.
Kim