IP: a Wizards day of pain

[David Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

Yesterday I bought a US Robotics bigpicture video kit. It has a nice video
camera and a Hauppauge capture board plus a 33kbps modem and a pile of
software.


You would think that after the software US Robotics supplied with by Pilot
I would have gotten smarter but the package looked so good.


BTW it promised a free upgrade of the modem to DVD (HA!! that was on the
box and NOWHERE inside was any sign of that promise).


Anyway, I put the Boards in and proceeded to follow the instructions given
in their map to installation. To say it did not work is to put it very
mildly the truth. Installation drivers were not where the installation
script said they should be and even when you find it it does not install well.


After much pain I got the video working so I installed their application
package. It is a mess -- not so much the apps which are fine but US
Robotics made a mess out of the installation. Like saying to tell the
script when a app was done installing but that direction often came after
the app had already installed and went elsewhere.


I managed to get it mostly working cept the sound part of their modem card.


I consider myself a fairly knowledgeable person and it was agony for me.
The average user would have a nervous breakdown.


When will US Robotics ever learn how to supply working software to match
their hardware.


BTW they said if you have any problem go to their web page which was to put
it mildly less useful then their manual and that was poor.


Advice -- do what I will do and return the piece of cr__ till they learn
how to make their software work.


Dave


ps in case anyone asks what their telephone advisers said they are only
open 0-5 weekdays when I work 9or am supposed to)