NEWS ANALYSIS : THE CUTTING EDGE : Standards for Quality May Be Computers’ Next Advance

The personal computer industry remained divided Tuesday over the significance of the flaw in Intel’s Pentium microprocessor, but hardware and software companies will probably be united soon on the need to improve product quality and reliability standards and to better serve less-sophisticated consumers.

Computer makers have long been accustomed to racing to market with the latest innovations, and some industry executives acknowledge that that has often resulted in unfinished, unreliable and bug-ridden products reaching the market. As PCs move into the home, they are increasingly being purchased by consumers who aren’t aware of this history--and aren’t much interested in $3,000 machines that don’t work properly.

That reality is part of the reason that a flaw in the Pentium chip that Intel regarded as insignificant has become something of a scandal. IBM said Monday that it would stop shipping Pentium machines, though most other PC manufacturers, along with Microsoft Corp., are backing Intel’s claim that most PC users need not worry.

But even if the Pentium dispute blows over, the broader issue will not. In a survey of nearly 100,000 readers reported last month in PC World, an industry publication, 44% of the respondents said they had at least one problem with their computers, and 6.7% said their computers were “dead on arrival.”

“In any other industry this would be unacceptable,” scolds Rick Thoman, an IBM senior vice president, in speeches around the country.

Competitive pressures are partly responsible. “Intel is rushing to get new generations of products out to stay ahead of the competition,” says Michael Cusumano, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who has studied corporate efforts to improve software quality. “They back themselves into a corner with their short delivery times.”

Software, which is basically a set of logical instructions that controls the functions of everything from missiles to microprocessors and telephone systems, has always faced problems as new improvements have been offset by the software’s growing size and complexity. It is often nearly impossible to predict what will cause a software program to go awry.

Capers Jones, a Burlington, Mass., expert on software productivity, likes to tell the story about an American jet fighter that would turn upside-down every time it crossed the Equator because of a flaw in its software.

Although leading computer, telecommunications and software companies have substantially improved the quality of their software over the past decade, Jones says, the average piece of software is still “embarrassingly bad.”

Quality problems, which are serious enough in critical business applications, are being magnified a thousandfold as computers are sold to millions of consumers who aren’t accustomed to defects in spanking-new products.

Microsoft announced Tuesday, for example, that it was making available a “patch” for the Pentium chip that would prevent it from causing errors on its Excel spreadsheet program. But customers who want the fix have to download it from an on-line service. That’s easy for a technically astute user. But a novice may wonder why he has to spend his own valuable time figuring out how to get onto a computer network so he can download fixes for a brand-new computer.

To prepare its products better for the expanding consumer market, Microsoft has revamped its approach to testing new products to make sure those that make their way onto the desktops of novices will be easy to use and relatively flaw-free.

“The tolerance people have for things not working is much lower” among novices, says Carl Stork, director of Microsoft’s Windows hardware program.

Microsoft has delayed delivery of its new operating system, Windows95, for more than a year, in part to put it through a vigorous testing program. Stork says Microsoft hopes to have Windows95 at the quality level more typical of a third-generation product when it is released to the public.

Although individual companies may implement rigorous quality-control programs, there is still no objective standard on which consumers can judge products. Garr Di Salvo, senior project leader for electronics at Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports, says that after years of effort, Consumer Reports still hasn’t found an effective way to grade personal computer systems.

“The industry is very dynamic. Perhaps too dynamic,” says Di Salvo.