While I’m installing Vista SP1 on another laptop (takes an hour or more) I read the following (in the NGW List):
Question: Does anyone know when Bonsai is going to go into public BETA?
Answer by Dean Lythgoe, director of GW engineering: We have not been very specific. General information has been: Public BETA for Bonsai will be this summer.
We have not changed that messaging and it continues to be on schedule. We have released twice to the Private BETA and we are wrapping up final details to ship the next ‘refresh’ of the Private BETA. This will probably happen on Monday or Tuesday of next week.
After that, we expect to have one or two more refreshes to the Private BETA before we go to Public BETA. Our last refresh was a month ago. You should be able to tell from this information the basics of where we are headed.
All that and I did not commit to a specific date 
Dean
Dean Lythgoe
Director, GroupWise Engineering
_
<>
… and you are really proud of not telling anybody anything – great!
Counting 2 and 2 together it makes at least another 3 month until public beta gets released – no statement about Bonsai getting released – that means, we payed a full term upgrade-insurance for NO new version.
Make up your mind, what a company must think about that.
Sabine
How can I get a copy of this Refresh 3?
I have tried many times to register to Beta program and was never sucessful in getting an e-mail from them of approving it.
What does it take to qualify?
Thanks
Krishna
I agree with Sabine, and this is not the first time it has happened. A full term upgrade insurance and nothing new….nada. Must be a great way for Novell to make money..hundreds of users paying for upgrade protection with assurances that there will be at least one major upgrade during the term and nothing… Way to go Novell!
Novell is the worst run company I’ve ever dealt with. You can’t find information about their products unless you know somebody’s name and they choose to blog on that topic. The blogs tend to be poorly written and full of undefined acronyms and Novell jargon.
They mock their customers by failing to offer release dates for products.
They act like their products are “industry leaders” when they outdated, expensive and uncompetitive. They haven’t had an industry leading product since Netware 3.1 and IPX. Wake up Novell it’s not 1992.
As a Novell partner I’m also not pleased with this policy.
I had a customer with 478 mailboxes and it was to small for Novell to communicate with them and we where promissed nearly 2 years that sucha thing like Bonsai is comming out.
This kind of delay is unacceptable.
No refunds, no free full term, nada
I don’t believe that Novell is doing this with key accounts (serveral 1000 users).
I’m only afraid that this is a cry in the dark..
Roel Niesen
1st Solutions
info@1stsolutions.be
In defense of Novell, I don’t really see anyone releasing software on time.
As to the pros and cons of upgrade insurance, well, that’s the nature of insurance. Maybe you’ll use it, maybe you won’t …
But if Novell charges based on a promise of at least one major upgrade a year, I think they’d do well to make good on the promise.