I'm a technical support manager for a large networking company. When a customer calls in and says "PC A" can't ping "PC B", they may or may not have done any troubleshooting to verify it was our equipment, but it becomes our job to prove that it's not our kit. (Or fix the problem if it is ours). Any idea how hard it is to prove a negative? There could be 20 different vendor's switches, routers, hubs, NICs, ets., etc., between those two PCs. We have to set up an approximation of the client's network in the lab, which means configuring other vendor's kit, and running the same traffic the customer has.
Okay, so what's the point? There are other companies, who because of their market share, or just bad support, will find it easier to blame the other guy, than find the real problem. I've had to point out specifically what was wrong on another vendor's implementation, before closing a case. It's really a function of how good a company's support team is...they represent the whole company. Which is what I keep trying to tell my guys...
So...get a taste of what kind of support you will be receiving from the company you choose...call them with a problem, and evaluate how they react. If it's "too late" and you're already in bed with a certain vendor, learn how to yell. In other words, when you are talking to a support engineer, and not receiving good support, ask to speak to their manager. If the manager doesn't respond, tell your salesperson, and get loud. Trust me, if you shake the tree hard enough, you will get your problems resolved. (Just make sure your problems are legit...don't make these guys send someone onsite to fix a problem that isn't real, etc. -- remember, support are people too...)
I should comment that the *real* birthday of HAL (Urbana, Illinois, 1997) was a major event for the town of Urbana, and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Mr. Clarke was supposed to appear at the celebration, but was too ill at the time. Roger Ebert (*huge* fan of 2001, and also UIUC alum--still friends with some of the school officials there) did appear, & gave discussions on movies & media in the school book store (pretty cluefull stuff--about adoption cyberspace writing conventions to express emotion in text).
Anyway, it was a fun birthday, and even though I don't miss the midwest, I do still have a special commemorative stamp/envelope that is postmarked from that day, with a planetary theme, and marking the day as HAL's birthday.
One side note to the HAL->IBM thing...the same can be said of VMS->WNT (Windows NT), apparently due to the main VMS architect moving over to MS to help write WNT. Hmm.
This is an excellent idea! It applies/.'s use of user feedback (comments) to the stories themselves. True, if the 'overflow' stories page becomes more popular than the main page, Rob & Hemos may have coded themselves out of a job (so to speak), but it certainly solves the "Rob does not scale well" problem. (with apologies to Linus for stealing that quote) Please! Can we see some feedback to this suggestion!?
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Okay, so what's the point? There are other companies, who because of their market share, or just bad support, will find it easier to blame the other guy, than find the real problem. I've had to point out specifically what was wrong on another vendor's implementation, before closing a case. It's really a function of how good a company's support team is...they represent the whole company. Which is what I keep trying to tell my guys...
So...get a taste of what kind of support you will be receiving from the company you choose...call them with a problem, and evaluate how they react. If it's "too late" and you're already in bed with a certain vendor, learn how to yell. In other words, when you are talking to a support engineer, and not receiving good support, ask to speak to their manager. If the manager doesn't respond, tell your salesperson, and get loud. Trust me, if you shake the tree hard enough, you will get your problems resolved. (Just make sure your problems are legit...don't make these guys send someone onsite to fix a problem that isn't real, etc. -- remember, support are people too...)
Good luck with your project...
I should comment that the *real* birthday of HAL (Urbana, Illinois, 1997) was a major event for the town of Urbana, and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Mr. Clarke was supposed to appear at the celebration, but was too ill at the time. Roger Ebert (*huge* fan of 2001, and also UIUC alum--still friends with some of the school officials there) did appear, & gave discussions on movies & media in the school book store (pretty cluefull stuff--about adoption cyberspace writing conventions to express emotion in text).
Anyway, it was a fun birthday, and even though I don't miss the midwest, I do still have a special commemorative stamp/envelope that is postmarked from that day, with a planetary theme, and marking the day as HAL's birthday.
One side note to the HAL->IBM thing...the same can be said of VMS->WNT (Windows NT), apparently due to the main VMS architect moving over to MS to help write WNT. Hmm.
This is an excellent idea! It applies /.'s use of user feedback (comments) to the stories themselves. True, if the 'overflow' stories page becomes more popular than the main page, Rob & Hemos may have coded themselves out of a job (so to speak), but it certainly solves the "Rob does not scale well" problem. (with apologies to Linus for stealing that quote) Please! Can we see some feedback to this suggestion!?