Monday, July 12, 2004
Software Upgrade Pain
If you've been in the computer industry for any amount of time, you probably used to read Byte magazine. My favorite column was Chaos Manor by Jerry Pournelle, where he would discuss the most recent computer catastrope he was dealing with. Mine is upgrading my email program.
At the office we use Lotus Notes (or as I prefer to call it, Bloated Goats). This is definately one piece of software I can live without. It is so awkward to use. So backwards from my way of thinking. Oh, and because I work at a large company, we're at least one rev behind. This is Notes 6.0 something with 6.5 being the current release and 7.0 in beta.
The upgrade process started with reading the upgrade instructions sent out by IT. That's read all 13 pages. Totally rediculous for an upgrade. I found that there were four major steps. Why can't this be automated and handled in one or two clicks?
Last Thursday afternoon I started the process. Before I could even begin steop one, I had to delete some mail from my mail store. It seems that 500MB is the maximum size for my store and I'm at 530MB. That explains all those "You're over your allocation" messages I've been getting. So, I start to delete and archive emails. That takes about two hours of my day. However, nothing I try solves the problem. Bloated Goats still says I'm at 530MB. Maybe IT needs to run an overnight process to purge things.
Friday was a sick day.
This morning, Bloated Goats still reports 530MB. Time to put in a trouble ticket to IT and hope they get back to me something this century.
About 30 minutes later, I get a voice mail from IT. "You need to get your mail store down under 500MB," it says. Time to call IT. It tell them, "I explained that in my trouble ticket." Their reply, "That's strange. We'll be right up to see." Uh oh, I think. This could be bad. And I still haven't done step one.
IT was here in a couple of minutes. They looked at my system and determined that the 530MB was in error and that I really was using less than that. They decided to do the upgrade while they were here.
The entire process took about 30 minutes...all four steps. So, now I have the new Bloated Goats installed. I took a quick tour and found that many of the complaints I had about Rev 5 were fixed, but that other things are broken. For example, it's now more difficult to do a Reply to All.
So, I shutdown Bloated Goats and launched Outlook...a MUCH better application...and what I really use. I have installed the Lotus Notes connector, which allows me to use Outlook and connect to the Lotus Domino mail server. I can do everything I could do in Bloated Goats except schedule conference rooms and access Notes databases, so over 99% of what I need to do can be done with Outlook.
All in all, the upgrade experience was not pleasant. Next time, I'll just call IT to begin with and have them do the whole thing.
At the office we use Lotus Notes (or as I prefer to call it, Bloated Goats). This is definately one piece of software I can live without. It is so awkward to use. So backwards from my way of thinking. Oh, and because I work at a large company, we're at least one rev behind. This is Notes 6.0 something with 6.5 being the current release and 7.0 in beta.
The upgrade process started with reading the upgrade instructions sent out by IT. That's read all 13 pages. Totally rediculous for an upgrade. I found that there were four major steps. Why can't this be automated and handled in one or two clicks?
Last Thursday afternoon I started the process. Before I could even begin steop one, I had to delete some mail from my mail store. It seems that 500MB is the maximum size for my store and I'm at 530MB. That explains all those "You're over your allocation" messages I've been getting. So, I start to delete and archive emails. That takes about two hours of my day. However, nothing I try solves the problem. Bloated Goats still says I'm at 530MB. Maybe IT needs to run an overnight process to purge things.
Friday was a sick day.
This morning, Bloated Goats still reports 530MB. Time to put in a trouble ticket to IT and hope they get back to me something this century.
About 30 minutes later, I get a voice mail from IT. "You need to get your mail store down under 500MB," it says. Time to call IT. It tell them, "I explained that in my trouble ticket." Their reply, "That's strange. We'll be right up to see." Uh oh, I think. This could be bad. And I still haven't done step one.
IT was here in a couple of minutes. They looked at my system and determined that the 530MB was in error and that I really was using less than that. They decided to do the upgrade while they were here.
The entire process took about 30 minutes...all four steps. So, now I have the new Bloated Goats installed. I took a quick tour and found that many of the complaints I had about Rev 5 were fixed, but that other things are broken. For example, it's now more difficult to do a Reply to All.
So, I shutdown Bloated Goats and launched Outlook...a MUCH better application...and what I really use. I have installed the Lotus Notes connector, which allows me to use Outlook and connect to the Lotus Domino mail server. I can do everything I could do in Bloated Goats except schedule conference rooms and access Notes databases, so over 99% of what I need to do can be done with Outlook.
All in all, the upgrade experience was not pleasant. Next time, I'll just call IT to begin with and have them do the whole thing.
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