Nikon UK senior management refuse to answer

[mark_poseley]

<p>Windows is a notoriously stable operating system, until you begin throwing third party applications at it. As an operating system designed to handle thousands of after market applications and hardware devices it is not surprising that vendors might publish glitchy software, or drivers, that can adversely impact system stability.</p>

<p>Poorly written applications that modify the registry, implement iffy .dlls, and generally corrupt the OS are usually the reason Window systems become unstable after prolonged use. Hardware failures in the CPU, memory, HD, or other support chips on the MoBo can also cause hard to find, intermittent errors.</p>

<p>After some period of installing and removing software, the OS can become unstable and this will tend to aggravate any other issues the system may have. Over the years, I have often been forced to simply reload Windows on a freshly formatted drive, and then slowly add things back in until I was at a point where I could work, or I discovered the faulty application or hardware. Often, on a clean install it can be easier to discover intermittnt hardware failures.</p>

<p>I would agree with the poster who recommends taking the machine to a certified geek you trust, and give them some time to poke around and see what's up. Running the system monitor and gathering reports on the hardware and software can point out (possibly) where the problem lies. The Windows system logs can also be a valuable resource to ferret out problems (if you understand the geekspeak). Google any error codes you find in the system logs to see what they mean if you really want to dig into it yourself.</p>

[mark_poseley]

<p>LeighB;</p>

<p>Multi - user and multi - tasking are not the same thing. Windows is not a multi - user OS and was never intended to be one. Even the Microsoft Network Operating Systems are not multi - user, they are mutli - tasking file and print sharing operating systems.</p>

<p>Windows is, however, a multi - tasking OS and it does have the standard protections built in, page faults, memory segmentation, etc.</p>

<p>UNIX and the various Unix like operating systems were designed from the ground up to service multiple users on one box in an interactive environment via rsh or other remote login type protocols. They typically use time slicing routines to devote CPU ticks to the different user applications based on priorities set by sysadmins.</p>

[leighb]

<blockquote>

<p>Multi - user and multi - tasking are not the same thing. Windows is not a multi - user OS and was never intended to be one.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Thank you, Mark. I'm quite well aware of the difference between multi-user and multi-tasking.<br>

If you'll re-read my previous post you'll find that I said:<br>

"It's a multi-tasking applique on top of a single-user kernel..."</p>

<p>It's a horribly antiquated architecture.</p>

<p>I think Win 7 is an improved version, but I've not gotten into the internals enough to be sure.</p>

<p>I've been working with windoze since the IBM PC was introduced, and with Intel-based personal computers running CP/M for ten years before that. I do have some familiarity with the environment.</p>

<p>- Leigh</p>

<p> </p>

[emiliogtz]

<blockquote>

<p>That's not true. It's a myth that the software industry has fostered to hide it's lazy inept development process.<br>

I've had two major software releases, on totally unrelated products, that had absolutely no bug reports or stability issues reported... none, ever.<br />One was the guidance and control system for the Pegasus rocket. <br />The other was a major custom software product for IBM.<br />Both worked first time every time, right out of the "box".</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I understand Leigh, I was actually referring to consumer-grade software. The mass-marketed one that you can buy online for a few hundred dollars (some of it can still be had in shrink-wrapped boxes). </p>

<p>IBM products tend to work because their approach to software/hardware construction is different from the industry (Microsoft) standard.</p>

 

[leighb]

<blockquote>

<p>I was actually referring to consumer-grade software.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Unfortunately I must agree with you.</p>

<p>It's a pity that our expectations of quality have been so diminished by companies only interested in putting bucks in their pockets so their honchos can become the richest people in the world.</p>

<p>If a company tried to sell an automobile with such low quality and huge list of problems they'd be out of business in a year.</p>

<p>- Leigh</p>

 

[mark_poseley]

<p>Even UNIX in single user state can multi - task... ;)</p>

<p>Your statement was not clear about Windows and Unix, thus my comment. It was not intended to offend; merely to clarify a point. Besides, UNIX is an older, and more archaic OS than Windows... :)</p>

<p>I will wander off now to compile my latest programming effort under Xenix (kidding, I have upgraded to FreeBSD these days...).</p>

[peter_gaunt]

<p>If the software is advertised as useable on your system and you're sure your system is properly set up then take it back to the shop you bought it on and claim a refund since the Sale of Goods Act says that the goods must be 'fit for purpose'. It's the retailer's responsibility.</p>

[porter]

<p>Works great on my iMac. As the others have mentioned, this is most likely an issue with yours and other users computers; in fact, my Macbook has great difficulty running NX2 without crashing every few minutes. I have no problem with this though since my Macbook has rather poor performance stats compared to my well equipped iMac. I understand that it's the computer, not the software.</p>

<p>NX2 with the Nik filter expansion software has had a very positive effect on my photography and I love how it operates (on my iMac). My still life wouldn't be the same without it. Thank you Nikon and Nik :D</p>

[richardsnow]

<blockquote>

<p>If a company tried to sell an automobile with such low quality and huge list of problems they'd be out of business in a year.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Google Daewoo or Isuzu.</p>

<p>@ Dr Penn</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Then again, when I read a letter like yours, I immediately put Nikon off the list and go to one of the many other vendors of electron microscopes.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>Seems a bit harsh don't you think?</p>

<p>Personally, I think the OP wanted somewhere to rant. Nikon does not develop, create, or support (well) Capture NX2. It is developed by a third party and branded by Nikon. If you want real support, (as others have mentioned), contact NIK Software since they developed CaptureNX and CaptureNX2.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.niksoftware.com/company/en/entry.php?view=contactus">NIK SOFTWARE CONTACT PAGE</a></p>

[joseph_smith3]

<p>Frank, I also support the recommendation that you take your computer to a reliable pc tech for a thorough check. I run NX2, version 2.2.6, on three windows pcs w/o any problems.<br>

My oldest laptop is about 9 years old, runs with XP Pro, service pack 3, has an Intel Pentium processor at 2.0 GHz with only 2 GB of Ram. NX2 runs fine on this machine and does not crash. This pc has all Microsoft Office products on it too. When this pc started to run real slowly, I took it to my pc guy and he wiped the hard disk clean and reinstalled all of the software that I needed along with the latest drivers. This laptop is running better now than it was when new. NX2 and all of its previous versions never has crashed on this laptop.<br>

I have another newer laptop-- win 7, 64 bit, 4 GB Ram. NX2, no problems at all. Same with my desktop win 7, 64 bit, NX 2, 2 monitors, 8 GB RAM, no problems. <br>

I think version 2.2.7 is now available.<br>

NX2 is the only raw processor that I use. I stopped using Photoshop with PS 7.<br>

Regarding Thom Hogan's negative comments on NX2, one is valid IMO--lack of 64 bit support at this time. I do not know if NIK is developing this version or not. Thom's other comments are more opinions than facts, IMO. Also he fails to state that NX2 has features (Control Point technology) not found in some of the other products unless you buy a plug in (NIK Vivesa ) at a cost that exceeds the full price of NX2.<br>

The key is to recognize what NX2 is and is not and what it should be compared to.<br>

Joe Smith</p>

[bruce_brown]

<p>Wow! Just checked my mailbox ... believe it or not, there are some who say D76, stop bath, and fixer were WAY TO COMPLICATED! At HKU (Hard Knocks University), and CCE (College of Continuing Education), this has been absolutely OUTSTANDING.</p>

[photo5]

<p>I've not experienced any problems with Capture NX or NX2. But all I do with it is open an NEF file and do some simple processing to it, and then move it over the Photoshop CS5 and finish there. I run it on an iMac with a 2.93ghz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU and 8gb of RAM. It hasn't ever crashed or froze up on me once. I find it a very nice program overall.</p>

<p>To the OP: I would recommend you copy all the documents from your PC over to an external hard drive, and then re-install Windows and all your apps. You can do this yourself without taking it in to a PC tech. PC techs usually charge $80 or so just to look at your PC, which I don't think is worth it for you.</p>

<p>Since I don't know the age of your computer, or the specs, I can recommend only this. Sometimes on a Windows PC there are tons of garbage applications installed that are up to no good. This is usually junk that the computer manufacturer puts on there. This is why I build my own PC's so I can escape this experience. </p>

<p>When you reinstall, make sure to do a long format of your hard drive. This will map out any bad sectors and they will not be used when the OS installs or at any other time. It could just be that your particular install of NX2 is damaged.</p>

<p>Until you have completely nuked, re-formatted, and re-installed Windows and all your applications, you can't really point the finger at NX2 as the cause of the problem. You have to go through troubleshooting steps on your own first. And document everything you do when you reinstall, keeping track of which applications you install, etc, to try to pinpoint the cause of the problem. Sometimes it is something as simple as Norton thinking NX2 is trying something that it shouldn't, and it's blocking it to "keep you safe." You never know until you try.</p>

[mariosforsos]

<p>I want to return a bit to the matter of contacting senior management (either in the UK or Japan). What kind of responce would you be expecting? A very experienced business manager to do what? "Command" the support people to delve deep into the code and fix whatever needs fixing for you? (Especially given you're working on a system traditionally riddled with problems and various incompatibilities, which essentially makes ANY remote diagnostic attempt almost futile?) Apologise to you? Would that resolve your crashes? Offer compensation? Would that resolve your crashes?</p>

<p>And if there were no earthquake problems in Japan, would you honestly expect the president to do what? Spank the UK management for...what precisely? For offering you good support? For being kind and courteous? Or would you expect the president to go across town to the software division (which, by the way, is now a separate company) and, after ranting at them, have their head come to your house in person with a team of 10 engineers and programmers to see what's what?</p>

<p>The whole idea is, frankly, absurd. I have worked in the support department of one of the world's best technology companies and such absurd demands and letters were, even when passed on to management, vetted and returned to the support department or even discarded outright. Look at it this way: if the CEO spends 20 mins on your issue (just reading the letters) the cost to the company would probably be much, much more than simply refunding you the money and sending you on your merry way!</p>

<p>Now, I don't mean to belittle your problem, but there is such a thing as appropriateness. And proportion. True, if you were Joe McNally, chances are senior management would bend over backwards to accommodate you, but alas neither you nor I are. In fact, even in his case, they would NOT have been able to solve the problem for him, simply because it is contingent to factors completely outside their control...</p>

[gerber_van_der_graaf]

<p>Yeah, de-fragmenting or reformatting the HD, re-installing the<br />software on a regular basis are typical features of this wonderful<br />OS from that well known company. Also, crashing of an application<br />or hanging of the entire system does not surprise anybody. In<br />addition, running anti-virus programs to 'protect' the system, that<br />occupies a significant amount of RAM and CPU, also are accepted as<br />normal practices.<br /><br />With all respect to the users of these OS here, but I left this<br />garbage behind already more than 15 years ago and never looked<br />back. Tried out several Linux distro's and sticked to GNU/Debian since<br />ten years, because of its philosophy: its written and maintained by<br />its users on a voluntary basis. So the user and his 'computer<br />experience' are the primary goals, not the pockets of a company. There<br />are no commercial interests or a single company behind it, that may<br />change its corporate strategy to its willing and leave its users<br />alone.<br /><br />Therefore, the system is rock solid, works on (currently) eleven (!)<br />different architectures (among two of these are kFreeeBSD), includes<br />more than 29.000 packages (programs and libraries) and provides<br />excellent support for users and developers. I only will have to<br />install the OS from scratch once: when a new HD or computer<br />arrives. Upgrades are done in-place. CPU and RAM is used for<br />applications, no virus scanners are needed. Yes, it takes time to<br />learn the system. But you can find documentation of excellent quality<br />and support using the mailing lists. And you can learn and investigate<br />the system into detail as far as you like, because its all open<br />source. The time for learning the system is well worth and will pay<br />off on the long term.<br /><br />The only draw back is that many manufactures of electronic devices do<br />not want to share the drivers under a Open Source license for their<br />devices. So, these manufactures oblige the user to buy the other<br />OS. That's a pity and a shame: it restricts users in the application<br />of the products they have paid for and are the legal owner. But if<br />consumers would be a little bit more critical, they should select<br />their products on the availability for other OS-es than only<br />MS_WIN. <br /><br />Said this, the Nikon scanners (the ED 8000, for example) have been<br />reverse engineered and seem to work fine using the SANE software<br />project. I am looking forward somebody will finish the same job for<br />the ED 9000, which I own. Is there any electronics engineer listening<br />here? I am open to colaborate. Though I have quite some programming<br />experiences, my knoledge on electronics is minimum <br />:)<br /><br />Gerber</p>

[fotolopithecus]

<p>I myself have noticed that Nikon software is something less than elegant on several computers, but if you can tolerate it the results are good.</p>

[mark_poseley]

<p>Gerber - Those of us who prefer to use our PCs to get work done have little interest in learning UNIX like operating systems. I tried that route and the learning curve detracted from what I wanted to do so I left it behind. If you prefer UNIX, get a Mac running their version of freeBSD. If you want software that will run thousands of third party applications and hardware devices, get a PC. In both cases the GUI will simplify life. And no, the GUIs provided in the various LINUX distro's (or even Solaris' GUI offerings) are not the same.</p>

<p>;-)</p>

<p>Remember, it's an OS, not a religion...</p>

[andylynn]

<p>Linux for photography? I mean, sure, you can, but why - none of the usual software runs on it. If you really want UNIX, use a Mac.</p>

[anuarpatjane]

This is an exaggeration, dont you think? Just ask for a refund and use lightroom or capture one instead. Best regards!

[gerber_van_der_graaf]

<p>IMHO I think it concerns a little bit more than 'just an OS'. It concerns about freedom and control of the computer and its software where it belongs: to the user. Did you ever read the licence agreements of the software installed on your system? You are not the owner of the software, you only may use it under severe restrictions. This, even when you buy 1000$$ equipment and the belonging software, it's not yours: you are not allowed to know how it works, adapt it to your needs or whatever.<br>

It seems the majority of the consumers have adapted and accepted the whole situation that the full control is in the hands of a few companies having a monopoly position. Then, one should not complain the problems that show up, the (often) low quality helpdesks and the time spent to tweek the system, without knowing what's going on behind the screens, i.e. lost time. Sure, program X works fine to me now, so why complain? And what about tomorrow? Can you still read / write your data from / to your device? Does it still work anyhow on the next generation OS? Or just keep a couple of computers around with obsolete OS-es? Nowadays computer usage is such important in everyone's life, I am still surprised there is so few consciousness about this issue.<br>

Of course one needs a computer to perform a task, mostly within tight deadlines. This counts to everyone, including me. But once I was doing a mission critical task with a tight time path (writing a PhD thesis) using the well known famous OS, I moved out from it because of its malfunctioning (losing data, blue screens etc). Even at that time, when Linux systems needed a lot of attention before working well, it payed well off to me. The time I had to spent to learn the system, still is an advantage now to me. Even lots of technologies have been changed in the mean time, but the basis functioning has remained the same and will not change drastic in a short period of time. Nowadays, installing, configuring and learning a modern Linux distro is definitely not more complicated than upgrading from WIN-XP to VISTA, for example.<br>

Therefore, I often suggest to consumers to insist towards manufactures to make their electronic devices work on a Free and Open Source platform and issue their drivers under such a FOSS license (what will they loose in not doing so?), or buying selectively.</p>

<p>Searching for freedom is not a religion, having it should be a normal thing. Unfortunately, it's not always is like that.<br>

OK, I admit, I am very convinced concerning this issue.<br>

;)</p>

[janos_kovacs]

<p>I 've been always a Capture NX user especially for basic processing and conversion. For advanced editing I resort to CS5.<br /> I ran Capture NX with all the Win based systems like XP, Vista and 7 ultimate. And although I like the results achieved with it, I cannot overlook the quirks it has.<br /> Since I upgraded my O/S to Win7, and my hardware to an I7, with 2 very good graphic cards, 6 Gigs of RAM and a SSD, CNX2 works OK, far from brilliant but OK. However it is very obvious to us the team who wrote this piece of software were not too much into photography. And it seems they are still not into it. <br /> In the old times, producst were releasead after a proper quality check, nowadays is quite ussual that manufacturers have their customers doing the hands on testing after the product purchase. The Mark III AF, Nikon 7000 hot pixels, K5 stains, are just some to mention. They fix what they can on the go and that's it.<br /> Coming back to the managers response, to me it is obvious they are aware about CNX2' shortcommings as I am pretty sure they have their own source of info, so more than a political statement, if any, you will not get.</p>

<p> </p>

[andylynn]

Well... I don't see how useful it is to have less restrictive software licensing when it's not the software you want to use.

And I've been using computers for somewhere between 28 and 30 years for various purposes and dont have any files

I can't read in some current program, so I think that problem is a bit overblown and I also fail to see the link between it

and choice of operating system.

 

To me, and I don't think I'm alone in feeling this way, choice of computer is controlled by usefulness, meaning how

much it does and how well, as well as value measured over the life of the computer, followed by design and build

quality - software license terms are a minuscule consideration. And if I want free software, it's not like there's much

that's useful that runs on Linux but not Mac - and there's a huge number of useful programs that run on Mac but not

Linux.

[emiliogtz]

<blockquote>

<p>Linux for photography? I mean, sure, you can, but why - none of the usual software runs on it.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Well, Bibble runs on Linux, and runs pretty well. For me, It ran much better than any Nikon Software did on Windows; no crashes, fast response, less resource consumption. Also, a decent Linux distro plus a Bibble 5 license cost *less* than a Windows 7 license alone (without antivirus, anti-malware, etc, much less imaging software).</p>

[andylynn]

Bibble is one choice. It also runs on Mac and Windows, which also run all the other software. A windows or OSX

license is cheap and there's plenty of free anti-malware software out there, so aside from the cost of an OS is there

any good reason to use Linux for photography?

 

Of course, CNX2 won't crash on Linux - because it won't run!

[emiliogtz]

<blockquote>

<p>so aside from the cost of an OS is there any good reason to use Linux for photography?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Well, when it comes to operating systems, stability ranks high on my list. If I were on a budget and had to choose, I'd go for Linux and Bibble without hesitation. At least I won't be wasting a great deal of hardware resources protecting the OS from itself and external threats (myself included).</p>

<p>Oh, and Windows is a cheap product, but not an inexpensive one. </p>

[peter_kervarec]

<p>Seems like a disproportionate response to a simple software problem that could be simply related to your computer.<br>

Did you want to do a lot of damage to Nikon or get the problem resolved ? I think the former has happened now, and posts like this probably cost companies multi thousands of dollars in bad publicity when really , we do not know the full story on both sides.<br>

Every pancake has two sides.</p>