Back before I was laid off as a product marketing manager at Sun, I was involved in "pushing" new releases. That entailed checking that everything worked correctly before a "site" was made "live". Even after it was pushed, I would check things as if I was an ordinary user to make sure everything was OK. Occasionally I would find problems at various stages of development.

I purchased and downloaded StarOffice a couple of weeks ago and could tell that whoever was in charge of that product didn't check the process as I encountered problems. They didn't provide an e-mail address where I could comment although they did have a live support person in Ireland, but he was clueless. You're seeing the results of that.

Unfortunately, in order to "stay alive", Sun has probably laid of too many people. They are probably still "process heavy" rather than being "results-oriented".

Chuck, former developer products marketing manager