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Does Comcast Hate Firefox?
destinyland writes "Comcast is the largest ISP in America. And they're requiring Internet Explorer for installations — even if you're using a Mac. The Comcast homepage even specifies that the page is optimized for IE 5.5 (which was released in 2000), and 'is not optimized for Firefox browsers and Macs.' With 13 million subscribers, you'd think they could spring for a web developer who could handle multiple browsers. (From the last line of the article: 'I'm afraid to ask how Comcast handles Linux...')"
They hate their customers.
I ran Linux when I last had Comcast installed. They asked "do you have *any* computer here with Windows? We can't do this without Windows." Of course, this was when they were using those stupid install CDs.
The guys who come to wire your house need to be able to configure your computer. Just ask the guy for the DNS servers if it doesn't just work when you hook it up. After this you should be on your way (atleast that is all that I remember I needed from him). You don't actually need to run the software - It's just that the well intentioned installer guys (who 'forget' to lock the TV signal for a nominal fee) can't really be expected to be networking gurus. or even novices.
Cheers!
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
1) No, I'm a Systems Engineer, not an Installer.
2) A majority of us use Firefox. Internally, it's the browser of choice.
3) The web page is probably something that hasn't been updated. There are tons of internal projects for that kind of thing. But of course it's done by committee, which takes time.
It's a non-issue, really.
The Rogers website works very poorly with Firefox [especially without flash], and the PDFs they send out don't render with xpdf, gs, or evince. It's also as if they go out of their way to break things on non-Windows platforms. The Canadian government is going the same way sadly. CRA, MOT and a few others don't render at all in Firefox, or when they do select elements fail and make the pages useless.
... :-(
And the worse part is though they have to go out of their way to break things. I mean there is enough HTML/CSS/etc in common between the two [IE and Netscape/Moz] that every website should at least be functional on both, if not presentable.
Pizza Pizza also doesn't work in Linux which means I have to boot my Windows laptop to get some chow
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
What has happened to Slashdot?
Comcast doesn't hate Firefox. They probably don't see a need to support it. I remember 5+ years ago, running my linux boxes on Charter. They didn't support it, but that didn't mean they had a problem with me doing it.
Here's a hint to the idiot who posted this: DON'T INSTALL THEIR SOFTWARE. YOU DON'T NEED IT. Plug your router/linux box into the cable modem, DHCP, viola, internet connection. Easy as that.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
What is this species, I have yet to hear about it? Is it endangered? Should be call PETA or Greenpeace or what?
Seriously though -- this seems like corporate laziness to the nth degree.
They also offer no support. If you call with a trouble report you'd better pretend you are using a Windows machine when they give you their step by step connection test instructions. If they say "click Start -> Control Panel" and you say "I have neither", the problem is obviously on your end.
This is also true if you have only Macs and Linux, which I did at both my home and my studio when I first set those up. Luckily the guy who handled them had his Windows laptop.
By the way, Wild Blue satellite, same thing. They have independent installers, but Wild Blue tech support can't help them if they run into a problem on and only Linux machines are on the customer's end.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
You don't need their disk. I've hooked them up for about 6-10 people and the first thing I do is trash that. Just set up the basic DHCP way for single machines and if you're routered, DHCP your WAN side and it's all gravy - takes 2 minutes tops.
This story is inaccurate. When I signed up for Comcast a few years ago, I had the following problem: I had only Linux installed on my computer and the CD that came with the installer only supported Windows and Mac.
I called their tech support line and explained the problem. The first person I got didn't know how to handle it, so they passed me on to their supervisor. The supervisor recognized the problem and knew how to solve it. He asked me for the serial number of my cable modem, the MAC address of the network card connecting to it and a few other minor bits of data. He entered it manually into their systems and told me to reboot the cable modem. It came up perfectly.
Admittedly, needing to call tech support for your "self-install" is a hassle, but it's still a far cry from "not supporting".
You may treat all information submitted above as wild speculation.
Verizon does something similar. When you sign up for their DSL service they ship a self-install CD that "brands" IE, installs a bunch of bloat and requires Windows to work.
If you call them up to ask for help and actively tell them you don't want to install the software, they'll grumble for a while but eventually cave and step you through how to manually connect to and configure the DSL Bridge/Router they ship you.
Right now the install wizard requires IE. However they can still activate you without it, which simply takes longer since the tech has to call in to have your cable modem registered. Soon Comcast is releasing an OS and browser agnostic installation procedure which will remedy all of the fuss. It makes business sense to simplify and streamline the installation process, which at the same time makes the consumer more satisfied. The techs can do more installs when they don't have to care about the OS or browser.
Yeah. That must be it. Comcast are doing something which requires their users to use a web browser that has been the dominant browser for the better part of ten years, a practice that was common on many websites for years and unfortunately is still quite regular even today. Obviously this is Microsoft's doing. It couldn't possibly be that the ISP in question are run by idiots, are willing to save any money any way they can by only supporting the most popular browser in their ignorance and greed. No this is Microsoft's doing, they bullied and bribed poor little Comcast who got confused by the fast talking businessmen and big bright lights of Redmond. Oh curse that Steve Ballmer and his minions for desecrating the virginal and well-intioned Comcast!
Or maybe Comcast is just another company, ignorant to the ways of the Internets and all too quick to save a buck based on their own ignorant assumptions about their user's choice of software. I know Slashdot is trolled by a ridiculous amount of anti-Microsoft sentiment but it's really getting to something when even a major ISP is gotten off the hook in favour of blaming it on Microsoft.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
Using a Mac is often seized upon by support technicians or customer service squids as a one-size-fits-all scapegoat to excuse themselves from providing assistance.
If I call anyone's support about difficulties (cable modem troubles at home, network issues at work) they will frequently jump as soon as they realize (sometimes after a comically long time) that I'm using a Mac, and declare with infinite righteousness and authority that my problem is definitely "Mac-related." And then they're off the hook, as far as they're concerned.
It doesn't really matter if it's a router issue, or even a bad password -- for some reason, the cause is always "Mac-related." They wash their hands of it and skip away free, easy as pie.
For me, when a technician or supportist utters that phrase what I hear is, "I'm incompetent, and I'm hoping you don't know enough to see that. See the pretty icon? Clicky-clicky!"
It plays into the myth that Mac users are somehow rare -- somehow few and far between. You can bash about market-share voodoo until you're blue in the face, it won't change the fact that it isn't hard to find Mac users. There are definitely fewer Mac users than Windows users, but that smaller number isn't nearly as insignificant as some would have us believe.
"I'm sorry, but the vast majority of our users use Windows. I can't help you."
"As a Mac user, that's very disappointing."
"Yeah, I get that all the time."
These stories are free but worth money.
Two months ago I was forced to call Comcast support for a dead modem. Now, at the time, I was running Fedora 7. The technician (I use that word loosely) was insistent I tell her the time, displayed on the lower right corner of my screen. My attempts to inform her that the time of my computer was irrelevant to a modem that is not syncing. After then giving in and telling her that on my desktop, the time is on the top right of the screen, not the bottom due to me being in Linux. "Ohh well, we don't support Linux" was the answer.
It then took another 12 minutes to explain that the OS of my choice has nothing to do with a modem that is failed. I was finally booted to a real technician after asking for a MAC address reassignment (tip: start using tech words and asking for things you can't actually do over the phone) I was able to get someone who at least understood what happened and send out a new modem.
What does this have to do with the topic? Well, I was asked to check a page at Comcast for terms, during the time I had told the "tech" that my cable was out, as they flat out said they would not support any issues with Firefox, especially under Linux, neither of which had anything to do with the problem.
Next time, I'll tell them I'm in BeOS or V2.
Why do overlook and oversee mean opposite things?
The night before I got my Verizon FIOS internet installed I had nightmares that I was going to end up with Yahoo toolbar, Google Desktop, and Norton Antivirus on my pristine gaming PC. So right before they came I hid my gaming PC in my closet and had my Macbook sitting out. It was very obvious that I had a missing desktop since I had my 5.1 gaming speakers not connected to anything. I figured that I could undo whatever crap they did on OSX better than I could on Windows. They refused to touch my laptop, so I just had them leave the router and I configured it myself. I never found out what was on that CD they wanted to install, but I am sure it was something horrible and evil.
I think it's a lot simpler then that.
Comcast has trained their install techs with Windows/IE. Almost every ISP i ever had gave me the same answer "linux not supported" or before 2000 - "which version of Windows are you running" and when i would say "Linux" they would ask again "so, which version of linux is it"?
In reality most of the time you just setup you box with DHCP and why would you ever want to visit their website anyway?
Let me start off by saying I am in no way a Comcast fan, more like a customer by force since they're the only form of broadband where I live. That being said, you don't have to have Windows for installation. My entire home network runs nothing but Linux, even on the router, and I had no trouble getting my service set up. When the Comcast technician came to unblock the line and perform the install, I told him I did not run Windows and that I would not install their software. He shrugged, then called back to the mothership, giving them the MAC address of my cablemodem and I was good to go. Maybe it's different in other areas...
With that out of the way, I have to agree that their website totally sucks. It's annoying as all hell that I have to enable popups and disable my adblock just so I can pay my damn bill online!
Fortunately, for now the FCC still requires them to allow you to use other ISPs (if you pay more, but it's worth it). No telling how long that will last, though.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Thanks to this wonderful article, we can now continue feeling oppressed because our operating system of choice doesn't get the same hand-holding that the rest of the world does! "Dear Slashdot, would you believe that the cable installer did not know what the Linux kernel was? I BET THEY'RE FUNDED BY MICROSOFT IN A GIANT CONSPIRACY TO BRING LINUX DOWN!"
Seriously, get off Slashdot if you don't know how to set up an Internet connection. You're lamenting the fact you don't get a few browser helper objects, your IE branded, default home and search pages changed, and about 3 or 4 extra things run at startup installed.
And what if the only other option is a Verizon 768kbps connection? Or no other option at all?
Regardless of whether or not the readers of /. can access the Comcast site with their favourite browser or not, the bigger problem which is (nearly) always ignored is the website's compatability with assistive technologies such as screen readers and adapted keyboards.
Websites that are not developed to standards are 99% likely to not work with these sorts of adaptive technologies causing major problems to people with disabilities. Unfortunately, without a successful legal test (or morals) case companies like Comcast can continue discriminating against this group of internet users and get away scott-free.
Unfortunately it's not just Comcast who are guilty of this. Most websites on the Internet are inaccessible to anyone not using IE/Firefox on a regular desktop or laptop pc.
How much were you paid by MS to astoturf?
The key to working with Comcast is to have some basic technical knowledge of cable internet. Once you show you know the lingo and you know the basic technical aspects, you'll either get the support person to "talk up" to your level immediately or switch you to someone that knows. Most support people have at least heard some of the terminology, usually enough to know if they're in over their head and need to route you to someone else.
For example, if you buy your own modem, NEVER say "I need my new modem INSTALLED." Say "I need my new modem PROVISIONED". 95% of the support people will know right away what you need and won't bother asking you about Windows and you'll be online 15 minutes later.
Know how to get to the status page of your modem (usually http://192.168.100.1/ but may vary depending on model). Know that your downstream signal needs to be between -10 and +10 dBmV. Know that your downstream SNR should be above 33. Know that your upstream power should be between +30 and +50 dBmV. When my signal dropped because of a splice in the line gone bad, I didn't tell Comcast "my internet don't work", I told them, "my downstream power is -16, which is out-of-spec, I need a tech to take a look at this". I had a tech out the very next morning and was back online by the afternoon.
Also, whenever you have a problem, BEFORE you call do the mantra of restarting your cable modem, router, and computer. Even if you know this will not fix the issue, do it. Then take the router out of the loop and do it all over again. Then when you call, tell them you did all this already. This will save time.
In all the times that I have had to call Comcast for technical issues, not once did the subject of Windows ever come up.
Karma: Frotzed (mostly due to the Frobozz Magic Karma Company)
There is a whole generation of IT people who grew up knowing nothing outside Microsoft. (By generation I mean some kind of IT generation, say 5 years). They exist in their little ecosystem of microsoft products and anything else makes them uncomfortable. These guys are still largely around, I work with one guy, he automatically assumes Microsoft has the correct answer, even when intellectually he can be convinced there is nothing special about them.
...
I guess Microsoft deliberately nutured this little ecosystems; not just in the positive sense of focussing on developers, but in the negative sense by their careful marketing and PR speak aimed at FUDding everything else.
This is nothing new to Slashdot. What's perhaps interesting is that there are still lots of techies in this mindset, when people here clearly feel things have moved on
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
Comcast has required MSIE since its' early days. That was when MSIE was a NOTHING. When Comcast bought ATT/TCI's cable, they went to work to quickly convert our systems to Windows. Even when it was shown that MS would cost them multiple times what was currently running, they moved off oracle/unix boxes to their Windows/sql server boxes.
If you have not figured it out by now (you appear to be a windows user, so I will write it real slow), I worked there during the buyout.
Having actually worked tech support for Comcast, I can tell you exactly why they only support IE 5.5. No one wrote a guide for anything else.
Comcast outsources its tech support to a third party call center provider. 90% of the agents on the phone have no idea how to use a computer and can only troubleshoot according to the guides that are provided. And Comcast only provided IE 5.5 guides. They don't even have IE 6.0 guides. Firefox actually works quite well with Comcast's $hit, they just can't offer any technical support for it.
And don't even get me started on their service, or that email change over program. That POS service is provided by some other company, and it doesn't work worth crap.
Sorry, you must be new here.
Didn't you know that on slashdot, snide off-topic comments about America (the spelling "Amerika" is de rigueur here), Red States, Republicans, GWB, Christians, rural people or Global Warming Skeptics equals positive "karma?" Pretty much everything in the moderation scheme--editors having unlimited mod points, the meta-moderation system and the algorithm that determines who gets mod points--work to reinforce the hive mentality.
So, it's time get on board with the group think. Sit back, relax and rip ole Dick Cheney a new one in the next discussion about Linux v. Windows.
P.S. In the time it took me to type this, you got modded "Troll." See what I mean?
Yes, I see what you mean...I spose I will just have to get used to it.
"When you can't run anymore, you crawl... and when you can't do that, you find someone to carry you." - Malcolm Reynolds
It's not that deep. It's more a case of lazy, shitty coding than it is a massive corporate tie-in with Microsoft. They run too much shit that is dependant on Internet Exploder, figuring that most of the lusers out there run IE.
So while it's going to be an easier install for the lusers on IE, people on Firefox, Safari, Seamonkey, Opera or what have you are essentially fucked. For them, the question is "why aren't you using Windows?".
BTW, for all the Linuxvangelists that wonder "why can't the users just learn Linux?", here's your answer.
Let's stop dilly-dallying and just change "-1: Overrated" to "-1: Disagree" or "-1: Doesn't Subscribe to Groupthink".
Your company just got a huge helping dose of bad publicity from an influential market sector, all because you were too lazy to update a simple webpage. Granted, as of now there isn't much choice when it comes to choosing an isp or cable company, just as ten years ago there wasn't much of a choice other than AOL. Well, time and technology change fast, don't be too surprised when we have a choice we'll head for the exits in droves. Right now, I'm actively looking at a place to live that will allow me to use a decent ISP other than Comcast, because of your insane policies.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Although it may not seem like it, a general shift from "What's Linux?" to "We don't support Linux" among tech support people *is* an improvement.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Nor is it unique. Around 5 years ago TurboTax suddenly started "requiring" IE. It check and if it wasn't installed, it installed it with the program and made it the default browser. It "needed" it because the instructions were in HTML. Any browser would would. And in fact it did. We did the install and changed the default browser back again (Opera, at the time) and it worked fine. This, after TurboTax tech support swore down and down (there was no up to their "help") that it absolutely required IE.
The same thing happened with Dragon Naturally Speaking, in the last version before MS bought it and built it into Word. Same checking and forced install, same rationale, same story from tech support, except we finally got one guy to admit it would work with another browser after we told him we'd already done it.
We had Adelphia for telecom at the time. They also force installed IE with their software. We just didn't install their software since it was nothing but IE, some help files, some self-promotion, and AOL and Earthlink install programs. The important stuff, ports and s4erver names and whatnot, were in the instructions, and Opera read those off the CD just dandy. Whenever we called for tech support they asked if we had IE. We said no, we had Opera. They said they didn't support that. We said we weren't asking them to support the browser, we wanted them to fix the problem with the line or network, and in fact I forbid them to attempt to provide "support" for anything from the wall plug in because I didn't trust them to leave my system in the state I wanted it.
Kickbacks. That's what it comes down to. Probably not direct monetary kickbacks, but something like reduced support charges for their own Windows Server software as long as they standardized their network by having everyone use one "standard" browser. Then again, this was Adelphia, so it might well have been payola.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
OK you got me. Microsoft forced me to do it.
No money though. Ballmer just sent me a photo of a mannequin with a chair embedded in it's chest with the word "You" scrawled along the bottom.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
I've used comcast (previously known as AT&T) since 1997 as a home customer, and I've never "installed" anything. I have never used their portal. Why would you? What would be the point? I subscribe to them because they are simply my connection to the outside world, and they are (in my case) *very* reliable and *very* fast. All you have to do is plug your router into their modem, and turn on DHCP. oooo. Yeah, that's hard.
Unfortunately, even their in-house people have issues with computing.
Businesses like ComCast will eventually die off. The world of Microsoft is a world that the sun is soon to set on; companies that do not see this coming will get left behind... including Comcast and many other places that seem to think that antiquated, non-standards compliant, user-restricting technology is what's good for this world. If Comcast weren't the only provider of 8 Mbit access in my area, I wouldn't use them, that is for sure: I would use something else. But they are the only broadband option here (no DSL, either), and so I am kinda stuck (and no, I am not using dialup. I wouldn't even think of it).
As for what they do about Linux? I tell them that I have Windows. I lie my ass off to them. Why? If I tell them that I have a Linux router, a FreeBSD server, and four Linux workstations, they assume that the problem is with me. If I am calling because the modem has block sync, and is connected just fine, and that I can ping everything up to their gateway, which is (maybe) responding to one ping packet every *minute* or so, they still say "Well, it must be your problem." They know *nothing* about networking, which is something that you would think would be required for someone that, well, supports a network.
On the other hand, if I call back and tell them that I have Windows and say "I can't get online," they seem to know what to do with that. My theory? They just can't handle it when people smarter than them call in. Most technical support places can't.
Meh, I have Comcast and I think this is sort of a non-issue really.
To get their service going:
Call Comcast, deal with the stupid support people and get your account set up.
Throw whatever disks they give you in the trash.
Connect modem to router.
Enjoy pretty fast service (at least in my area).
What's the problem? I don't use their web portal (or at least very rarely) and the modem that I bought works fine with their service and my router.
SIGFAULT
I went through this frustrating bit recently, and it looks like it may be the "wizard" which is just a bunch of web pages viewed through the browser - in part from CD I think, and in part from the web. It's possible the web stuff uses old-skool IE-specific code. It was rather amusing seeing IE 5 being installed on OS X just to set up my connection.
For those of you who are idealistically challenged- Comcast is AT&T- it is the beast. It's the company that championed the decimation of Net Neutrality while Microsoft and Google fed lawyers and experts into congress to fight them.
Microsoft is a friendly and well meaning company (even to F/OSS) compared to AT&T. Companies like Comcast bought up all the cable startups across the country during the fiber boom of 2000 and kept the fiber dark, so that the only broadband available to them would be Comcast when it came around- this kept many large areas in narrow-band for years (those of you from the Far Western Suburbs of Chicago (for instance) would remember this.
The CEO of AT&T publically bragged about being able to get any law he wanted changed or created by congress, which he made out to be in his pocket. The Chairman of Microsoft (Bill Gates), on the other hand, is one of the world's greatest philanthropists. The last time he spoke to congress, it was about improving our nation's schools.
The point is- the rivalry between F/OSS and Microsoft is (believe it or not) a friendly rivalry with little damage and few hostages. Ubuntu's latest window manager is a direct send-off to Vista. We all love and hate Microsoft. The rivalry between The People and AT&T is truly the epic battle of Good Vs. Evil.
If you're so worried about Comcast requiring IE to install, why don't you use Opera or Firefox and simply mask as IE? This sort of LAZY (not evil-- cheap. lazy.) development was long considered by Opera ASA and the Mozilla Foundation. This is why Masking is available.
I had Comcast Broadband for about three years. (I've since switched over to Earthlink broadband, which uses Comcast's wires, their modem, etc)
Comcast themselves don't support anything but MS Windows because most of the time, the people coming to install the broadband stuff are contractors who aren't paid to know two or three different operating systems. Instead, they are trained to know one (if that), and that is MS Windows, preferably Win2k or WinXP. I think that's the biggest reason for the "Windows only" support. Trying to support more than one operating system increases the complexity of the support structure they would have to maintain, and since most of the users are using Windows (and those that aren't are probably going to know what they're doing anyway), it's the most cost-effective approach.
That said, a Windows system is only necessary for that initial configuration, where the cable modem is registered with the local network. After that, they couldn't really care less what one does on their "LAN side" of the modem. If problems arise, though, you're on your own, unless you have a Windows system you can use for walking through the troubleshooting steps with Support.
For example, I have several computers on my LAN. Comcast (and now Earthlink) doesn't care. If I were to share my network with my neighbors and war drivers, I'm sure they'd have something to say, but as long as it's my own personal use, they don't say a word.
I used my kids' WinXP system for doing the initial configuration. Since then, I have had systems running Solaris, Linux, MacOS X, and several flavors of MS Windows.
When politicians are involved, everyone loses.
When the Comcast installer came to my house, we used my Mac to set up the service. IE was required. I didn't have it installed, so we had to go through some song-and-dance to get a connection going so we could download it. The installer was a nice guy, but he was surprised that everyone didn't just use IE. He seemed genuinely surprised that any other browsers even existed. I deleted it as soon as we were done.
Now that Microsoft has discontinued IE for the Mac, what's to be done?
They know *nothing* about networking, which is something that you would think would be required for someone that, well, supports a network.
Try their TV people. I called up to try and get them to update the firmware on my cable box so I could control it via a serial cable with my MythTV box.
I lied and said I had a Tivo and the guy was all "What's Tivo"?
..don't they eventually leave each other?
I changed ISPs because my decent one was swallowed up by TELUS which royally messed up my nice little setup--they warned me that it would happen, but didn't say exactly what would happen or exactly when.
I went with "basic small business service" from a company called Radiant--it is the same kind of DSL, largely riding on the same TELUS networks, but Radiant does the admin. I get multiple fixed IPs, no ridiculous bandwidth caps, and tech support is staffed with actual techs. My plan is basic--CONNECTIVITY ONLY. They do not provide me with email addresses, do not host domains, don't block ports or provide firewalls or proxies or anything on their end--they offer those services with other more expensive packages.
One thing they DO regualrly do is scan their entire network and have tripwire-like software to alert them to problems. Within minutes they can find open mail relays, worm-infested IIS servers and so on--at which point ALL traffic involving the affected MAC address is blocked until theproblem is resolved. This is a very nice policy for professional services compared to the block-and-filter-by-default policy of residential/consumer service.
In any case I now have the freedom to establish my OWN firewall policies, host my OWN email and webservers, set up MY OWN VPN and whatever else--so I don't have to rely on the ISP to make sure those things are online and properly configured, whether it is filtering false-positive-SPAM without telling me, or imposing file attachment and mailbox size restrictions I don't like. I can use apache with mod-perl and whatever database and Perl or PHP scripting to my hearts content, all with my ISPs blessing, because if my server grinds to a halt it really only affects me.
I love the idea of "connectivity only" service and very few ISPs seem willing to offer it. At the consumer/residential level, there should be that kind of service too, with just a single DHCP address supplied behind a simple NAT firewall so a person can just plug and go. Really who needs an email address from their ISP nowadays anyways, when everybody has an email address through work, or gmail, or hotmail or yahoo already? The less they have to offer, the lower the cost for the same or better reliability and bandwidth (I pay almost the same for my service as some others in the US pay for crappy Comcast like service). How many people actually USE their ISP's web pages and CDs and whatnot? Even my retired parents almost exclusively use their hotmail accounts because, even as relative beginners on computers, they realise that they can't be bothered with the pain of an email address that cannot move between ISPs. I think a LOT of people would go for under-$20/month 2.5Mb/s DSL "connectivity only".
>As for what they do about Linux? I tell them that I have Windows. I lie my ass off to them. Why? If I tell them that I have a Linux router, a FreeBSD
>server, and four Linux workstations, they assume that the problem is with me. If I am calling because the modem has block sync, and is connected just
>fine, and that I can ping everything up to their gateway, which is (maybe) responding to one ping packet every *minute* or so, they still say "Well, it
>must be your problem." They know *nothing* about networking, which is something that you would think would be required for someone that, well, supports
>a network.
When I had service from this godforsaken company, I lied my ass off too. At that point, they were trying to tell me that I couldn't use a router because it was against the EULA or something. They were trying to charge you for every access device that touched their network. Ridiculous, cuz it's just bits to them. Every time I called Technical Support, I had to remove my router, boot into Windows and troubleshoot the problem like I was a complete idiot. If I mentioned pinging or gateways, the person on the other end got flustered.
Once, a slightly clued tech support guy was convinced that I had a router, to which I kept insisting that I had no idea what he was talking about. I had just removed my router 2 minutes before. He was trying to imply that I was stealing service from the company. I just kept playing dumb and had him fix the problem at hand. Then I hooked my router back up. I am pretty sure they stopped trying to enforce their stupid "no router" rule, but still, if you ever need tech support, first remove it, because the complexity will just destroy their ability to troubleshoot anything.
They also hate KMail, Linspire, Thunderbird, and Eudora, even though they have instructions on the Comcast website on how to set these things up to work with the Comcast email servers. They actively sit around and brood with their hatred for alternative browsers, even though their help site has instructions on how to make Firefox your default browser. They hate Firefox, Opera, Camino, and Safari, even though they say these browsers will work with their service.
Yep, they hate anything that's not from Microsoft.
Penny - plain text accounting