It is not necessarily how Ipswitch is thinking about it, these changes are based on user requests.  For the UP notification deal, when one has a backup system in place that will come "UP" when another system fail, then they would want to be alerted that the backup system is UP.  A "Down" notification will not work in that case, because the message will cause confusion. 

What would make it useable for all types of users/companies, would to simply have an option that emulates exactly how up/down alerts worked under WUG.  With that option enabled, it ties the two together as they used to be.  For those that want them to operate independently, they simply uncheck that option.

And, A MANUAL would be nice.  The help file is a joke, the solution system is even worse.  There is absolutely no useable documentation on this not so cheap and rather complicated product, which defies all logic, IMHO.

As it stands, I've had to uninstall WUP, and re-install my old WUG software to monitor my system, as WUP is not currently up to the task.

Steven D. Porter
Senior Systems Administrator
North Attleborough Electric Department
Town of North Attleborough

Mark,

Yes, actually, your description of what SP1 will have, is what I was trying to explain.  The "option" I was referring to, was just that, some sort of toggle, or drop down choice.

As far as the manual coming "as the product matures", that's kind of "too little, too late", don't you think?  I mean by the time the product matures, the vast majority of us will no longer require a manual.  I realize that due to the bugs, omissions, etc., the manual would be a changing work in progress, however, typically, that's what errata sheets are used for.  If the manual would be produced in .pdf (which is certainly the best way to go in this case), changes could be made quickly and easily.  I guess I'm just confused as to how a product as complex as WUP is, would ship without any form of usable documentation for us user's to refer to, nothing to speak of online, and barely a skeleton version of a built-in help system.

I've been using Ipswitch products for many, many years, and up until this point, I have seen nothing but stellar work in both program functionality, as well as documentation.  I've truly loved all of your products, and have advocated their use among all my peers.

However, I'm sorry to say that I'm severely disappointed with Ipswitch, for this recent release of the What's Up product line.  As I stated before, I bought WUP expecting it to be usable immediately, but am completely unable to use the product in its current state, and have had no choice but to shut it off, and re-install my old WUG to get the critical monitoring that my department requires.

Obviously, this is not an acceptable solution to resolve a severely broken product.  I truly don't understand why we must wait until March, or possibly beyond, for a fix to this problem (up/down status reporting).  With most other software vendors, a problem this big, would be addressed with a hotfix, to make their product function the way it was expected to function, when purchased by their customers.

Now, please don't take this as a bash session, or anything along those lines, I am merely presenting the situation from the point of view of a customer that purchased your product, but will be unable to use it for potentially 4 months or more, after the purchase.

Steven D. Porter
Senior Systems Administrator
North Attleborough Electric Department
Town of North Attleborough

I have to agree with Mr. Porter on the development of this product. When WhatsUp Pro was released - it was touted as the next great thing from Ipswitch and to migrate ASAP. How a company could release a product with no formal documentation is beyond me. As for the "false" notifications, it is highly unreasonable not to issue some sort of fix sooner than a proposed Service Pack 1. The product is essentially unusable for monitoring of devices until this Service Pack 1 arrives.

As an Ipswitch product user for many years, for many uses and companies, I am slowly losing my patience with the quality of this product.

Thomas Sylvester

Systems Manager, Daytona Beach News-Journal

Agreed and well said!

Senior Network Engineer

Fox Chase Cancer Center

Hi,

At the time of his posts I sent a private message to Steve Porter on the subject of why we did not release the fix to the UP alert earlier than Service Pack 1.  I will go ahead and post the explanation here as well. 

As you know, WhatsUp Pro has an underlying MSDE Database, which is totally different than the "flat application" approach of WhatsUp Gold.

Changing the UP action behavior would require making database schema changes that will affect other areas in the product.  This would not be just a simple 1mb or so hotfix.  After making such a change it would be another 60MB download.  

Since we already scheduled a Service Pack to address enhancements, bug fixes and new additions, we decided to put the UP Action design change on the plate as well.

Had it been WUG a hotfix would most definitely been released for it much earlier.  As a matter of fact we did release 8.04 after WhatsUp Pro and it turned out that it too had an UP alert problem, which when we found out about it we went to work on it and released 8.04 HF1.  All within 2 weeks.

As I explained to Mr. Porter as well, we anticipated that current WUG users will not feel comfortable shutting down WUG to migrate to WUP altogether. There will be new functionalities, new bugs, some old things in WUG no longer present in WUP...etc, and so for Service Agreement holders we gave them WhatsUp Pro for free.  If they did not have a service agreement, they had an option to buy one for $395 and get the full installation of WhatsUp Pro.  Yet we are still selling and supporting WhatsUp Gold.  

So as longtime WUG users, you have a choice to continue using WUG.  We are still supporting it, and you do not have to migrate ASAP, unless you feel comfortable with moving on to WhatsUp Pro.  You are not being forced to run WUP, that is your choice to make whether to go to WUP or not. 

WhatsUp Gold has been matured over the last 6 or so years.  It too has gone through some major changes and when those changes were made we heard from dissatisfied customers about new bugs, or about how things are done differently.  And over time it has become better and as a result many WhatsUp Gold users are happy with it.  The same is going to happen with WhatsUp Pro, including its documentation

We will continue to hear from customers on what could be better, what should have been done, what is broken and so on and so on, and we will continue to make decisions based on the customers needs. 

Hi Mark and all,

I just wanted to put my two cents into the issues mentioned in this post. I too have been seriously disappointed with many aspects of the new product but I'd like you to know why I'm so disappointed.

Quite simply WUP is light years ahead of WUG and I'm excited about using it! From interface, to SQL support, to Web interface, the list could go on and on. Because of how excited I am/was about using this new version, my disappointment with it's initial flaws is proportional to that excitement.

That said going back to WUG from backups isn't really a big deal for us. You and the rest of your crew at IPSwitch keep pushing forward with your goals for SP1 for WUP.

I appreciate all the hard work your staff does!

Best regards,
William Gardner

William Gardner
Director of Information Technology
Noble World Communications
http://www.noble.net
bill.gardner@noble.net