🚀 go-pugleaf

Daniel K Hartman writes
> I'm afraid I have to disagree about MIT being a god educational dealer.
> They do seem to promote the NeXT line, altough not anymore that anyother  
line,
> though this is questionable.
> 
> My main problem is that they seem very disorganied.
> 
> <couple of examples deleted>

> also, many people I have talked seem to have bad impressions of the MIT
> Microcomputer center at worst, and neutral at best. No one I know has
> actively praised them, but then again, maybe I just don't get out enough.
> 8-) 8-)
> 
> Of course, this may just be all a fluke, how about any other MIT students'
> experiences?
> 

Well, I must concur.  My experiences have either been neutral (i.e. they did  
what I would have expected) or negative (less than I would have expected).   
Never have they exceeded my expectations (unlike, let's say Stone Design or  
HSD).  The neutral experiences have been when I first bought a NeXTStation for  
personal use last year.  I walked in and walked out with the machine.  Went  
quite smoothly.

Just the other day, I needed a long monitor cable, they had them in stock. I  
went in and walked out with the cable.

Fine.

The negative experiences center around the fact that there seems to be only one  
person authorized to do any thing at all with the NeXT at the MIT MicroComputer  
Center.  His name is Jafar, and he's a reasonable enough person.  He's very  
hard to get a hold of, though, and no one else will help you.  

For example, a few months ago I tried to get the technical documentation set.   
I talked to Jafar, he said it would be a special order, and could I call him  
back in a day or two.  After about three weeks, over a dozen phone calls (most  
of which were never returned), a couple of e-mail messages (none of which was  
returned), it basically came down to the fact that I should wait until  
Addison-Wesley published the doc and buy it from them. Note that I didn't get  
this info from Jafar, I figured it out myself when I was over at Quantum books  
looking for any NeXT books they had and they mentioned that they were expecting  
the NeXT Technical Documentation set in two months.  *I* told Jafar (who didn't  
know). 

That experience, and a few others like it, don't lead me to believe the MIT  
Microcomputer Center or Jafar is out to get anybody - it's just that they're  
VERY disorganized, and the current method (all NeXT stuff goes through Jafar)  
doesn't work.  If he was more available, if he always returned calls and  
e-mail, I would think differently, but he doesn't.

Just another data point...

--

-->  Michael B. Johnson
-->  MIT Media Lab      --  Computer Graphics & Animation Group
-->  (617) 253-0663     --  wave@media-lab.media.mit.edu
-->  NeXT Mail accepted at  wave@waits.media.mit.edu