Sorry if my post confused you to the point of trying to make this an elevation of NVIDIA above 3dfx and ATI through rose colored glasses (as usual), but that wasnt the point.
I may have muddled the consumer relations vs. developer relations a bit in the end there, but the main point was consumer relations = developer relations. Publicly listing bugs trickles down to developers, rather than developers having inside information from their dev. rel. reps that consumers will beat their heads against the wall for months trying to isolate or determine the source.
Like I already said concerning NVIDIA dev. rel.- from my collegues still interacting with NV, their experiences are finally favorable and more "informal" honest responses seem to be the result, which was never the case in the past. If anything, I figured this would illustrate an *improvement* in their support services versus the crappy, idiot CS path some management training still preaches.
On end-user support, there are a stack of Z/W buffer, AF, refresh, TV-Out and plethora of other issues outstanding on the GF4 that are a black-hole/void of information to the consumers, versus several public confirmations of similar issues for the 9700. NVIDIA has always been double-secret in releasing informaton to their consumers regarding bugs (for obvious competition reasons) and ATI seems to have taken that leap with the 9700. Whether it pays off or is destructive remains to be seen, but from the onset it seems to be favorable. The only time NVIDIA has ever come forward to acknowledge a bug or issue is under extreme pressure of being pointed as a "cheat" to cover up with PR/reasoning- yet I've never seen them come forward for general, everyday bugs/issues like ATI is doing now for their consumers... just for their developers with Cg issues, and developer interest issues only.
