Haig's answers and my reply about the PD5 G200 beta

[Manifest]

TheMorg

Nice message, only comment I have on it is your reference to Hybrid. I will turn that around a bit and say; “Who could believe that the drivers could come any SLOWER!"

[LightHeaded]

Oops. See following post

[This message has been edited by LightHeaded (edited 06-30-99).]

[LightHeaded]

Filmgeek,

I don't think that it is a case of kissing up that is going on here. And please consider the possibility that there is a strong camaraderie among those who are "regulars" to this forum. A thread titled 'Who is Your Favorite" is most likely an attempt to de-fuse a stress time bomb and return some good karma here.

This does not need to mean that this is some kind of treehouse club of mutual back scratchers. These people become friends in this forum, and they share a common tie in terms of their choice of computer hardware and personal interests. If it wasn't for the fun and lightheartedness here, this place would be horribly clinical and boring. After all, this is just about graphics adapters, not the honor of our family lineages we are talking about.

Sure, the delay on drivers is a crummy deal. I can personally appreciate that. I own a design firm that lives and dies on using OpenGL rendering apps. And I have a lot of money invested in people, software and hardware. So this whole NT ICD delay was a real big piss-off for me, AFTER I bought the cards. But I did my bitching and moved on.

Does that mean that I rag on those who Matrox, for their own reasons, chose to use as beta testers. I did not get a G400 to test, and I would have loved one. But I did persist in sending emails to Matrox and followup phone calls until I got an answer about the NT ICD. It wasn't the answer I hoped for, but it was an answer that made perfect sense....and it proved to me that they really were doing all they could reasonably do to fix the problem.

Could they have done things differently? Probably....But we don't know what market pressures and R&D limitations they have. We don't run the company. We just use the product and sometimes think that Matrox should have this bottomless well of people and money to draw from, just because we want them to. Well, they don't. They have designers and sales reps and assemblers and tech support and buildings and all kinds of overhead and payroll and all the other crap that comes with a business...particularly when trading in such a cutthroat commodity as consumer computer components. So stuff doesn't always work out they way we want or the way even THEY want it to.

I would like to have five more employees....but I can't afford it right now, even though we are buried in work. So I do the best that I can, because I value ALL of my clients. But even when I try my best, sometimes we drop the ball. It just happens.

I am glad that they are using a small group of beta-testers. I think each beta tester has a hardware configuration that represents the most common configs around. And those guys really know their stuff. They can provide Matrox with very specific, useful reports. If everyone that used a computer did beta, the flood of unqualified commentary would slow things down, not speed them up.

I don't kiss any persons or company's ass.I am nice, and jovial with people who are nice to me. I call that friendliness. Some people call it ass-kissing and soppy. That is their problem.

My frustration with this whole thing is that it is pointless and damaging to innocent parties. Good people are getting disgusted and are leaving because a few individuals can't shut their yaps after they have beat the point to death. Matrox blew it, some of the drivers are late, they didn't choose to open-beta test their new stuff. Fine, great, we get it, go get appointed CEO of Matrox and you can do it your way. But until then, quit giving us all heartburn.

We came here to be helped and to help.

What did you come here to do?

------------------
Paul Luntsford, LC
PLA Designs, Inc. Theatre and Lighting Consultants
NT4, AOpenAX6BC, P3-500, 100MHzFSB,256MB SDRAM(PC100),MillG200AGP/16MB SGRAM

[Jake]

Filmgeek,

I'm sorry you feel that way about the thread I started. I can however understand how some people could feel left out in the cold. If that's how you percieved it, I'm sorry. It was never my intension to convey a hidden message about who's the "in-crowd" and who not.

I was an attempt to restore the good humor and friendly atmosphere that has been a part of this forum for a long time before the flame wars. It sounds to me like you have some kind of high-school experience in your life about popularity contests that made you compare the thread to that. The thread was never meant to be that serious.

If you think that the goodhumored people who post here are only trying to get to be in the "in-crowd", meaning sucking up to Matrox, you could not be more wrong. A thread like "Who's your favorite" gave everyone a chance to have a good laugh and think of something other than release dates missed, screwed up drivers, the wife and all the bills at home and so on and so forth....

I know the subject was not as fun as the good old Star Wars thread, but the intension was the same.

Have a nice day,

Jake

[Filmgeek]

Lightheaded,

Your make some good points in your post and I respect your opinion, but I'm afraid we'll have to agree to disagree. Some quick points:

-Believe me, there is a difference between ass-kissing and friendliness. (I never said you were ass-kissing) Ok, I'm done with that word, sheesh.

-In my post I was trying to draw some parallels between Matrox and some of the local businesses I've seen start small, get big, and then shrivel up because of the same mistakes. Maybe Matrox isn't like that at all.

-I don't want to be CEO of Matrox, honestly. Not unless they moved to a warmer location.

Anyway, you said you did your bitching and you moved on, well, I've done my bitching and I'm moving on.

P.S. Just to be clear, I have helped out plenty of people regarding Matrox questions, including in these forums. More in the Video Forum than this one though. I'm not a person who hangs around here just to give people "heartburn". Whether you believe me on that is up to you. But I'm big on consumer rights, and when I feel like speaking up I do. I try to refrain from personal attacks and if anyone looked at my posts I think they would back me up. Regarding the "Your Favorite" thread, I'll have to take your word on it. But do you honestly know of any "popularity contests" that have created any good karma?

Filmgeek




[This message has been edited by Filmgeek (edited 06-30-99).]

[Filmgeek]

Jake,

Just read your message after I got finished posting mine. Fair enough, no hard feelings then. Thanks for the post.

Filmgeek

[Jake]

You are right about the popularity contests. In hindsight I will say that maybe I was a bad idea. But I kinda needed the forum to light up in another way than using a flame thrower.

I can see that your reason for posting here are professional. That's just fine. I do not mind admitting that I come here just as much for the fun of it and the good cameraderie.

Regards,

Jake

[Ant]

Jake don't feel bad about posting something to lighten these forums up I'd much sooner see that than the constant moronic whining of some.

Filmgeek I don't remember saying anything about you, if you feel my comments were directed against you that must say something in itself. Sure you are entitled to stand up for consumer rights by why attack the people that are trying to change things? Attacking beta testers and the one person at Matrox that is publicly trying to turn things around is pathetic. As I've stated these forums are users forums they are not here for constant bitching and whining at Matrox, if you want to do that mail webmaster@matrox.com. No one is asking anybody to be an "ass kisser" or purely be pro Matrox just to behave like an adult and respect the other visitors to this forum. If people can't stick to those simple little rules then they will be banned, I will not stand for anymore of this crap and see these forums deteriorate and be ruled by one or two mindless idiots. Filmgeek that is not directed against you personally but if you feel it is then so be it.

The beta test program some people are going on about is a tech support beta test program independent of the software developments own beta test program. It is not THE Matrox beta test program, it is designed by tech support so they can try and highlight problems missed by developments testing before they escape.

Now let than be an end of this shall we and move on.

[This message has been edited by Ant (edited 06-30-99).]

[Filmgeek]

Ant,

Ok, this is my last post in this thread, I promise. I only responded to you in this thread because you said "I see people criticising the lack of a public beta then criticisng the 4.51 drivers and OpenGL ICD that were a public beta." That is the only reason why (I guess incorrectly) I thought that your post involved me. I felt the need to respond to this because I did criticize the lack of a public beta, but I don't see any hypocrisy in doing that and also criticizing the quality of the Beta OpenGL ICD and 4.51 drivers as well. If these are examples of Matrox trying out a public beta program, then they certainly didn't take it very seriously.

Also, and for the last time:

-I never attacked the beta testers.

-I never attacked Haig.

-I did criticize Haig's method for choosing beta testers. So, I'm sure he'll take that under advisement. (or something )

-I'll readily admit to expressing my anger and frustration at Matrox. I have no regrets about this.

-I've tried to be an adult and as unpleasant as my postings may be to some people, I've always tried to keep my postings civilized.

-Some people are here just to flame. Those people reside on both (pro-Matrox and anti-Matrox) sides of the issue. Regardless of which side they are on, I agree with you that they are "pathetic".

Done.

Filmgeek


[This message has been edited by Filmgeek (edited 06-30-99).]

[Ant]

Once again my comments were never directed at you or any one person specifically but to the "feel" of some of the postings that had been made. I'm quite happy for you or anyone else to express their anger at Matrox so long as they do it in a reasonable manner and undertstand that most of it is falling on deaf ears in a forum such as this. Some people are targeting their anger in the wrong places and most certainly at the wrong people. I quite often express my frustration and anger at Matrox here and on the MURC.

Now lets all have a big dose of and get things back on track.

[Ant]

Stoopid server

[This message has been edited by Ant (edited 06-30-99).]

[PaulS]

LightHead,

I am curious about how you reached the conclusion that Matrox were really busting their butts to get an NT OpenGL ICD out. I too spent a lot of time emailing them about this, and even got a "beta" driver. I reached the exact opposite conclusion, that NT users were probably their lowest priority and they were simply not prepared to invest the resources necessary to fulfill their promises.

Haig,

No offence, but you have always drawn a clear line between your role as a technical support person, and the responsibilities of other departments at Matrox, such as marketing, customer relations and driver development. I am wondering how it is that the technical support department is running the beta test program? The beta programs I have been involved in are usually more closely linked to the coders, sure the tech support people are involved, particularly at the release candidate stage because they need to become familiar with sorts of questions they are likely to be facing. But on the whole tech support is tech support, beta testing / development is a completely different area.

Since it does appear that tech support is part of the development program, then you can't really shrug off all those people asking to be kept informed of the progress by redirecting their requests to some other department. If you don't want to answer those questions then just say so.

Kind Regards,

Paul

[This message has been edited by PaulS (edited 06-30-99).]

[Agent]

Damn it, I'm going to keep my post short.

Manifest, your carefully worded whinging does not appear to have achieved a great deal.

Haig, I know you're tech support and have nothing to do with the beta boyz, and maybe you're contract with Matrox forbids you from making public comments about internal events at Matrox, so just nod if you agree that Matrox have been thumbing their nose at the G200 owners by expecting them to use a beta driver for 7 months and to keep their mouths shut about it.

Beta Boyz, I don't envy you, beta testing sucks, especially when you've got people like us asking you a billion questions all the time and what's more, you ain't getting paid for it like I do! :P

As for me, well, my G200 is where it should have been from the start, in my workstation, as far away from games as I can get it!

Ciao folks, back to the gaming forum for me!

[Haig]

Hi Paul,

I guess it's because I was the one who started this when I was handling tech supp on the video side. Right now, I have 2 groups (Video and Graphics) of which each group has their own mailing list which consists of people from various departments.

An important thing to remember is that our programmers don't have the time to verify the bugs.

This way, all reported bugs get reproduced by tech supp and then get entered into the database with a long detailed description. If the programmers have a hard time fixing it, they just come over to tech supp and look at the problem on our systems.

This eliminates a "wild goose chase" for them.

I guess it isn't the normal "image" of a tech supp dep't that folks are used to seeing but running a beta program is just one of the things we are currently doing "behind the scenes" in Tech Supp.

"Since it does appear that tech support is part of the development program, then you can't really shrug off all those people asking to be kept informed of the progress by redirecting their requests to some other
department."

I always said, if anyone wants to know about a certain bug, just ask.

If it's about release dates, I won't do it. I explained my reasons about this I think on this thread.

If it's regarding anything else, just ask. If I can answer it, I will. If it involves me to go against my NDA, I'll just say so.

Marketing - If someone asks me a question that is marketing related, I won't answer it.

Customer Support - I always direct people to them whenever they want a refund or have a complaint about Matrox.

Agent:

"...so just nod if you agree that Matrox have been thumbing their nose at the G200 owners by expecting them to use a beta driver for 7
months and to keep their mouths shut about it."

Despite to what alot of people think, we haven't thumbed our noises to the G200 clients. It was a gross mis judgement on our part regarding the ICD. The product manager had also publically stated this in an interview. We know we let down the G200 clients with this and the long awaited drivers. There should be more drivers to get released with new ICD's for the G200 coming your way.

I won't make any excuses as to why the new PD drivers took so long but we did do a complete face lift with them adding more features that our competition doesn't have. This meant that we had to start from scratch in most of the modules.

Maybe they took long but I think our record for supporting older cards can speak for themselves.

Haig

[This message has been edited by Haig (edited 06-30-99).]

[DrMordrid]

As far as frequency of support by a graphics card maker I think some of you guys need to do some research.

I went to http://www.download.com, CNET's big download site, and searched for how many updates ATI and Matrox have released to them:

ATI: 11

Matrox: 44 (not including todays PD5/OGL release)

Just in the last 12 months Matrox has released at least 9 Win9x PowerDesk updates (counting todays PD5/OGL ICD release), 8 bios updates, 2 new Win9x Video Tools and 2 new NT4 Video Tools that activated capture and the TV tuner under NT4. This doesn't even include game patches and the like.

Thats not too shabby in my book guys. It was also a helluva lot of work.

In short: give 'em credit where credit is due if you're going to critcize their failings.

Dr. Mordrid