There were seven respondents in a population rumored to exceed 100.
I didn't respond, but count myself in the results.
NOTE: The averages are not terribly scientific - the sample size is pretty
small, and it was also apparent that most respondents didn't read the question
( a ZERO is not in the requested range. ) ( SOME subject given should have
received a 10 from each respondent )
------------------------------------------------------
News Software: (C-News, B-News, INN ... etc. )
Cnews - 6
Other - 1
None - 1
News Reader: (NN, TRN, XRN, PG, MORE, LESS .... etc. )
NN - 2
TRN - 2
RN - 2
Other - 1
None -1
Operating System: (CP/M, MS/DOS, AMIGA, UNIX, LINUX ... )
Unix SVR3.2 - 2
LINUX - 2
SunOS 4.1.3 - 1
AmigaDOS v2.10 - 1
UNIX (Irix 5.2) - 1
Windows NT 3.1 - 1
Memory Size: ( in K Bytes or M Bytes )
Ranges from 4 to 24 Meg
Hard Disk Availability: ( M Bytes )
Ranges from 10M - 3G
CPU and speed: (68030-33MHz, ?86-??MHz )
Everybody seems to have adequate horse power
Are you using the premium service that requires the decoder:
Nobody uses the premium service
Do you pay attention to {Rate in order of importance (10 very - 1 not much)}:
entertainment : range 0 - 4 average 2
stock quotes during the day : range 0 - 10 average 3.875
stock closing prices : range 4 - 10 average 7.25
world news : range 3 - 10 average 6.875
business news : range 2 - 10 average 7.875
weather : range 1 - 10 average 5.25
sports : range 0 - 10 average 3.75
education : range 0 - 9 average 2.375
One of the changes that I am considering is to drop the attempts to capitalize
the articles. This is a high overhead operation which is rarely successful.
This operation appeas to be most useful in the xpress.news.international.china
articles which would come through in lowercase. I would replace the
capitalization attempt with forced uppercase. What do you think?
The "majority" of responses thought that all uppercase would hurt their eyes.
The remainder did not understand the question.
Another change is to try to eliminate the multiple buffering going on in
the formatting of an article. This will greatly reduce the current
memory requirement for the software as well as tend to smooth out the
processing of articles and hopefully reduce the number of missed articles or
quotes due to the placement of the bulk of the processing between articles.
How many of you are getting these complaints:
T_EUNIT: unmatched
T_EFRAG: unmatched
from your X*Press news gateway software? I believe that most of these messages
stem from the attempt to process an entire news article before your receiver
overflows your buffers.
Most respondents see the messages occasionally - more when the system is
loaded, than not.
Do you want to get a summary of the responses?
Everybody wanted to see a summary.
-- Richard Schaal Motorola Computer Group M/S AZ43 DW278 2900 South Diablo Way, Tempe, AZ 85252 Voice: (602)438-3519 Fax: (602)438-3836 E-Mail: rschaal@phx.mcd.mot.com "This is a great place to work.... there's a going away party every Friday!"