The Netblitz-kreig is unacceptable!
By Marc Sikkes
Published on Thursday, November 15, 2007
To the Editor:
John Gaythorpe may wish to see Netblitz go away, but as someone who has had the misfortune of having to use Webblitz and Webmail for the past two days, I certainly do not ("Netblitz conks out, resurrection unlikely," Nov. 14). The latter two programs may well be better at handling passwords, but in all other respects they are terrible. Webblitz is slow, clumsy and has a truly wretched user interface. It can also be difficult to connect to.
Webmail wouldn't work on my computer at all. Netblitz is simple, fast and easy to use, which is why thousands of alumni and students off campus continue to use it. Dave Marmaros '01 created a program that is vastly superior to the alternatives and gave it to the College for the benefit of students and alumni. He has also freely donated his time and expertise to maintain and upgrade it in the years following his graduation.
In light of that, I find Systems Services' attitude quite strange. Netblitz was working fine until about lunchtime on Tuesday here in London. A couple of hours later the site carried a notice that Netblitz was being decommissioned.
Exactly how much time did Systems Services give Dave to fix the problem before they decided to scrap Netblitz altogether? Twenty minutes? An hour?
Netblitz is a great service, used by thousands of people, at little if any cost to Dartmouth. The alternatives to Netblitz range from very poor to truly awful. I strongly encourage Systems Services to restore this service as soon as possible.