Road Runner Doesn't Do XP

PerlStalker writes: "Internet News has an article up that mentions, among other things, that Road Runner (owned primarily by AOL/TW) will not support XP. From the article: 'Road Runner, the second-largest cable Internet service provider (ISP) in the nation with more than 1.4 million subscribers, does not support the controversial new operating system (OS) for its customers and will not support its use on the cable network.'" Note that this doesn't stop customers from connecting to Road Runner from XP systems, but until their staff is trained specifically, Road Runner won't help them with technical problems arising from that combination.

Comments

This may be what they are "publishing"...

[FortKnox]

...but my local roadrunner said that they'll do their best to help. They say that if you follow NT instruction, it works fine, and they already have a large userbase of XP users without any problems.

Linux, on the other hand, isn't supported, and most of their techies have no idea how to help out. Not that its tough (standard DHCP connetion), but the average user would be better off with XP than Linux right now (sorry if that sounds trollish, but I don't think this article is "news". Anything that can hurt MS in the least is being published now-a-days).

Dont say XP say 2000.

[BrookHarty]

Might as well say Windows 2000, its networking is the same. Why put fuel on the fire and tell them your running an unsupported product.

I dont tell the phone monkeys im running linux, I say yup, running windows, whats the IPs/settings.

In fact, I have to lie about what browser im running, what OS im running etc... No monoploy, Uh-huh...

Re:Big deal.

[joabj]

I've actually had one tech support guy on the cableco service I'm on (Starpower) *request* that we do troubleshooting through Linux, even though Starpower doesn't offically support Linux.

I had dual boot connected to the cable modem which I kept specifically to keep Windows onboard for their benefit. The tech guy found it easier to diagnose the problem through Linux's IP tools though.

Re:Yup ... I suffered this recently ...

[Mr. Flibble]

Same here.

I am behind a Linux firewall, typing this on Linux.
My cable modem (Shaw.ca) works just fine.

When I first set up my system, the tech came by with my free network card (part of @home at that time) and I said, install the cable modem, give me my free NIC and go away.

He insisted on installing the NIC... Until he saw my computer room with its 14 running systems (mostly *nix)

I got my systems up without problem, then one day @homes DNS went down in my area, and their routers began dropping packets.

When I phoned tech support to let them know they tried to "troubleshoot my system".

I had to inform the tech that "No, my system is fine, your DNS on my node is down, and the router from here to Calgary is loosing packets."

He could not understand that I had already switched over to my DNS servers at work (because theirs were down) and that the packet loss *HAD* to be on my end.

Thank god I know the (former) tech-head for that section, got through to him and told him what was wrong. I spent ages on hold, and longer talking to Tier 1. As soon as I got bumped up, mentioned the problem my node was working again (no loss) within 15 min. I don't know about DNS though, because I have not switched back off of my servers at work.