December '97 Reader Survey Results

ith any piece of engineering as complicated as an operating system, problems are bound to arise. This is even more true of modern OSes, which can take up hundreds of megabytes of hard drive space and which must run an enormous array of hardware and software simultaneously. All this means that any operating system developer has to have a good system of finding and correcting these problems, and of distributing the fixes. IBM's solution is the "FixPak".

Different readers have written to us alternatively praising and condemning FixPaks over the years, so last month we asked our readers to tell us exactly how they really feel about "FixPaks".

Answers to our survey were accepted from December 16th until January 13th. We had a total of 1,827 replies to our questionnaire with 94 "spoiled" entries (replies were considered "spoiled" if they did not contain an e-mail address, if they were incomplete or if they were duplicates). This left 1,733 valid replies. The results were as follows:

What is the highest level of FixPak you have applied?

Two interesting things were revealed by the answers our readers gave to our first question last month. First, it seems OS/2ers like to keep their OS/2 systems on the cutting edge. Over half the respondents (50.9%) in our survey reported that they had most recently applied FixPak 5 in some language. Secondly, only a handful (7.4%) told us that they had never applied any type of FixPak. So much for the old saying, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

How did you install your most recent FixPak?

The variety of methods that our readers reported using to install their FixPaks may indicate that IBM is doing a good job of distribution. The results were fairly evenly spread out among our suggested answers, with installation from floppies being slightly more common (33.7%) than other options. The significant number of people installing directly from the WWW (29.3%), as well as the fact that many probably download their FixPaks from the Internet to install from floppies or Hard Disk shows the significance of this channel. However, the respectable portion of our readers (10.3%) that now install FixPaks from CD shows that this relatively new option is catching on.

Are FixPaks well made?

Regardless of how much we install them or how easy they are to find, the real measure of IBM's "cure for what ails our systems" is whether they solve our problems. Finally last month we asked just that.

And apparently IBM knows what it's doing. Almost half our readers (46.6%) said that FixPaks fixed all or most of their problems with OS/2, and more than four out of five readers (84.8%) said they fixed at least some of their problems. Less than 10% (8.2% in fact) said they had no effect or made their systems worse.

That's it for this month. Don't forget to fill out this month's questionnaire and check back in January for complete results!

Complete December '97 Survey Results

What is the highest level of FixPak you have applied?

Category	Count	Percentage
FixPak 5 for Warp 4 (US English)	796	45.9%
FixPak 5 for Warp 4 (non-US English)	86	5.0%
FixPak 4 for Warp 4 (US English)	157	9.1%
FixPak 4 for Warp 4 (non-US English)	7	0.4%
FixPak 3 for Warp 4 (US English)	73	4.2%
FixPak 3 for Warp 4 (non-US English)	35	2.0%
FixPak 2 for Warp 4 (US English)	11	0.6%
FixPak 2 for Warp 4 (non-US English)	10	0.6%
FixPak 1 for Warp 4 (US English)	108	6.2%
FixPak 1 for Warp 4 (non-US English)	54	3.1%
Any FixPak for Warp 3	267	15.4%
I have never installed a FixPak	128	7.4%
I don't understand the question	1	0.1%
TOTAL	1,733	100.0%

How did you install your most recent FixPak?

Category	Count	Percentage
From the WWW	508	29.3%
From a CD	179	10.3%
From a hard disk	335	19.3%
From floppies	584	33.7%
I told you, I don't know what a FixPak is	1	0.1%
I can't remember	3	0.2%
I told you, I have never installed a FixPak	123	7.1%
TOTAL	1,733	100.0%

Are FixPaks well made?

Category	Count	Percentage
Yes, they fix all my problems	134	7.7%
Yes, they fix most of my problems	674	38.9%
Yes, they fix some of my problems	662	38.2%
No, they don't fix any of my problems	56	3.2%
No, they make things worse	87	5.0%
I still don't know what a FixPak is	3	0.2%
I don't know, I've never used a FixPak	117	6.8%
TOTAL	1,733	100.0%

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