It's been usable on my desktop for almost a decade but I don't own (or have any intention of owning) an iPod, I don't do video editing and find the GIMP does enough image editing that I'm ever likely to need. Other than that, on my Linux desktop I can play (and emulate) enough games for my need, surf the web happily, write documents and spreadsheets, and rip CDs. Therefore its fine for my "desktop" use.
But there are people who do want the equivalent of Adobe Photoshop or whatever the best Windows video apps are, on Linux. For them it's patently not worth them making the switch and I fully agree with them.
I don't personally care about the penetration of desktop Linux but if the aim is to get it running on as many desktop PCs as possible, then only the creators of the most popular Windows applications can assure that by porting those apps to Linux.
To be honest, hardware problems on Linux can be pretty much erased from your life forever provided that you do a bit of research and choose your hardware carefully.
I've not done it recently but a couple of years ago, one of the best ways of proving whether or not your hardware would ever work with Linux was to just boot the PC from a bootable Knoppix disk, as Knoppix had the reputation of being able to find just about any piece of hardware that the Linux kernel could support.
If it didn't work in Knoppix then the chances were it would never work - at least in my experience.
Yep, getting xorg.conf right can be an absolute nightmare, even for us more experienced types.
But to be honest, the best approach with configuring Xorg is to do it in small steps, gradually getting the configuration better and better, rather than trying to get all of it right at once. And when you get an Xorg configuration that does work to a degree, back it up and GUARD IT WITH YOUR LIFE!!! You will ALWAYS screw things up and need to start again from a working xorg.conf, believe me.
The best thing you can do from here is some diligent Googling mentioning xorg.conf, the make of your video card, the make of your monitor and the resolution you are trying to achieve. There is always a slightly smarter person than you (or I) who's got things working a bit better and has put their xorg.conf on a web site somewhere for all to see which you, in turn, can use as a template to at least get started with.
I've been a UNIX geek for some 20 years (though I always have one PC somewhere with the latest iteration of Windows on it - well, apart from that Vista trash but that's another story) and I started off with Linux some ten years ago - firstly with Slackware, then Red Hat, then SuSE, back to Red Hat for a while, then Linux From Scratch.
About four years ago I settled on Gentoo Linux and I'm still with it - as an experienced Linux person, I truly believe that the only way of having a fully optimal and stable system as much of the time as possible is to "do-it-yourself" with rolling updates that compile everything against the library versions your system currently has. Gentoo isn't perfect but it does its job most of the time and that's what counts.
I wouldn't say that Red Hat and SuSE "sold out" to commercial interests but they are certainly no longer contributing to the adoption of Linux on the desktop, preferring to sell Linux products more for the corporate server space.
Having said that, I tried Ubuntu recently and whilst I cannot consolidate my mind into buying into any distro that expects relatively frequent "wipe and fully reinstall" updates, I was impressed with the user friendliness of it - to the point where I've pointed friends of mine at trying it when they've asked about it, they all seem to still be using it (at least dual-booting it like you) and I've not had many questions or problems thrown at me by them.
So whilst Ubuntu is of no real use to me, I very much respect what they are doing and long may they continue with it as it will be those kinds of easy-to-use distros with good support tactics that will determine Linux's penetration in the long run.
...I have it on good authority that there are an extreme minority of well-dressed Cthulhu-type cultists who are planning to cause air travel chaos and disrupt as many flights as possible over the next few coming months.
These cultists are ardent students of the Book of Genesis in the bible who consider that all evil stems from Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden who were tempted to pluck a fruit from God's tree by the Devil in the form of a serpent.
The emblem of this fruit is carried openly upon the mind control boxes possessed by these cultists, who frequently gather in Starbucks and Internet cafes, openly displaying this emblem in order to attract other cultist colleagues into terrorist quangos to plan their revenge upon the rest of us.
Therefore, please keep an eye open for smartly dressed people carrying little white boxes bearing an apple emblem on them - they are not to be trusted. Remove their boxes from them and stamp on them, find out where they live, break into their houses and smach up their huge designer coffee tables and African dance memorabilia.
You're a record company that wants me to part with my hard-earned money to buy my music track-by-track at a price that's usually more expensive than just going to the cheapest CD vendor I can find and buying the CD...
You then expect me to pay that price on the basis that the compressed music format I'm buying is of lower quality than what's on the CD...
You're then saying that the music I download is protected to the point where I cannot share it with anyone else - unlike a CD which I can loan to a friend or family member to let them listen to...
And on top of all that, you're now saying that even when I've downloaded it for ME to use on MY PC and music players, I may be severely restricted in being able to do that also whereas just about any CD I buy plays on any music player I own and can be ripped with a free CD ripper on any OS I care to use...
My response is two words, the first being an Old-English coloquialism originating from the Battle of Agincourt and the second one being the word "off".
People, it's time to wake up and smell the coffee...
Buying a CD gives you something tangible - a shiny disk, a printed sleeve to read while in the lavatory undertaking your morning ablutions, and, to boot, a nice hard protective case to store it in to that you can file neatly and alphabetically on a shelf and gaze lovingly at occasionally along with your vast collection of other CDs...
And if you truly believe that a music CD only contains one or two good tracks, then you are listening to the wrong sort of music or not a true music fan - there is an ABSOLUTE WEALTH of good music out there spanning back hundreds of years and if you can take the time to research what you plan to buy carefully, you will rarely, if ever, be disappointed with your CD purchases...
So please STOP with this "paying for downloads" nonsense - like a moronic dwarf, it's not big and it's not clever.
If a music artist or group is not able to string together at least one album that is an absolute pleasure to listen to, then please ignore them until they either go the way Britney Spears has or release something that IS worth listening to.
And once you find that album, having avoided buying it in the rip-off merchant high street stores, you will understand that EVERY CD YOU OWN IS WELL WORTH THE MONEY YOU PAID FOR IT!!!
Rant mode off, this is a true music enthusiast signing off...
Even my parents Jack Russel Terrier knows more about the real issues with Vista than this hack.
Well then get him to answer a few of the Vista gripes on here then! I'm sure he'll do better than some of the so-called "Vista Experts" on here and there's a few poor Vista-owning saps who could do with the help.
Oh, and if you have a Linux-using Labrador please let me know - I'm having problems getting 3D sound to work on My Dell XPS laptop with Gentoo so maybe he can give me a kernel.config file or two!
And if, by chance, you have a canine with expertise in Mac OS, one can only assume that it must be a neatly-coiffeured French poodle...
Actually, you've made something of a sweeping statement there as with USB on XP, it seems to be more of a case of which USB drives you use.
For example, my SanDisk USB drive completes copying immediately XP says it's finished, my PNY branded USB drive takes a second or two to finish and my cheap unbranded USB drive can take anything up to 20 or 30 seconds to complete. In each case, I watch when the LED stops flashing on all the drives and I guess it's something to do with the quality of the circuitry in each one.
Tricked through inexperience as a newbie - not reading a listing properly before bidding, then realising I'd agreed unwittingly to an extortionate postage charge.
I do about half-and-half selling and buying, I have around 1600+ feedback so have done quite a lot of business on eBay. I've never had bad feedback as a seller, only a couple of neutrals where stuff was damaged in transit and the buyers left feedback before even contacting me to sort out the problem (which I would have done without argument) and, unlike most sellers, my buyers get (good) feedback the moment they pay me, not only when and if they leave me good feedback.
However, I had an interesting situation a few months ago having purchased three CDs from a seller in Germany. (I'm in the UK.) The seller stated discounted postage for multiple items in his listings but the Paypal invoice from him (which I couldn't change) didn't reflect the postage discount. I emailed him daily for 5 days asking for a correct invoice, on the 5th day I asked either for a correct invoice or his Paypal ID so I could just pay him directly.
He responded to the 5th email, gave me his Paypal ID and I paid him - in the Comments box in the Paypal payment I put in there it was payment for the 3 CDs.
One month went by and I hadn't received the CDs. Since this was last October in the UK, when there was a postal strike, I didn't see any point in chasing the seller sooner. Once the strike was over, I emailed him asking him politely where the CDs were, he responded by raising 3 non-paying bidder alerts against me. So I sent him a screen capture of the Paypal payment to him and asked him to remove the alerts. He promptly refunded my payment, told me that my payment was not acceptable as I had not put the item listing numbers in the Paypal message to him and left the alerts on.
At this point, I decided to try and outwit the seller. Forgoing the postage discount, I paid the original Paypal invoice to him which removed the Non-paying bidder alerts and then raised a complaint to eBay about not receiving the items. He then emailed me telling me that he would not sell to me as he refused to deal with "Polish crooks" and refunded my payment again.
At this point I realised that when I'd made my original Paypal payment to him, he'd seen that despite being in the UK I have an obviously Slavic surname and decided he wasn't going to sell to me on the basis of his belief that I was Polish. I did email him back, said it was none of his business anyway but that I am actually Ukrainian, not Polish - at which point he backtracked a little, said he had nothing personal against Ukrainians but I'd decided by this point enough was enough, told him he was a rascist and complained to eBay.
eBay removed the non-paying bidder alerts but I'd had a gutfull of the seller, went through his feedback history and saw some very rascist bad feedback he'd left for other buyers in the past - as well as a large number of mutually withdrawn bad feedbacks. I left him bad feedback stating he was a rascist, he responded in kind but with feedback stating I had sold HIM some dodgy copied Polish DVDs!!!
I complained to eBay about his totally irrelevant feedback, they did nothing about it as you'd expect, about a week later I got an email from the seller asking to do a mutual feedback withdrawal. Suffice it to say, I told him to shove it, realised bad feedback as a seller is worse than bad feedback as a buyer and that was the last I heard from him.
However, it's the first time I've heard of a seller refusing money on the basis of a buyer's heritage - what an idiot!
Yes, you're correct in as much as it is possible to have a low value but heavy item that costs more to ship than what you won it for on eBay - it's purely a matter of using some common sense from the buyer's perspective.
However, a lot of sellers do capitalise on the fact that the shipping cost is not always immediately evident and I doubt there is one buyer on eBay who has not been tricked by such sellers in the past - myself included.
Personally, if I'm looking through listings, I'd like to be able to list by TOTAL PRICE (Auction / Buy It Now Price + Shipping) - especially because I buy a lot of new (but obscure) CDs on eBay and use Amazon as a comparison site for prices. If I buy CDs from Amazon enough volume, shipping is free from them and therefore affects price comparisons with eBay.
Besides which, we all know a lot of people over-inflate shipping costs and reduce Auction/Buy It Now price to avoid paying higher listing and final valuation fees - this must cost eBay quite a bit in lost revenue and would therefore be in their interest to monitor declared shipping costs by sellers.
So had you bothered to even attempt to help yourself, your next step might have been to go looking around a few forums for assistance. I'm sure that had you posted the laptop's model number and/or the NICs model number, someone very quickly could have told you whether it's supported by the Linux kernel.
Alternatively, you could have downloaded one of the "support as much hardware as possible" distro boot disks like Knoppix and see if that picked up the NIC.
Again, you need to want to help yourself. If you're going to fall at the first hurdle then stay away from Linux - you don't need it.
I always find it amusing that just about any Slashdotter who cites problems with installing Linux only ever seems to be able to write about those problems in a very generalised fashion, rather than being more specific such that one (or more) of the myriads of Linux users on here might possibly even be able to offer some helpful advice. It seems to me that there are a certain class of potential Linux users who don't even want to help themselves!
As other posters have said, the art of installing Linux is to ensure you choose your hardware dilligently, especially with laptops. If you don't have the technical skills to install Linux, then why not buy a pre-installed Linux laptop?
You also need to bear in mind that using Linux defines a need for some personal responsibility, self determination and self motivation - there's no denying that the moment you start using it as a newbie then you're going to be on a steep learning curve. If you're not prepared to invest time in that or spend some time researching web sites and forums where other people may ahve experienced the same problems as you and published a fix or workaround, then don't use it. It's that simple.
And I'm afraid you're going to be a long time waiting for that call - Linux is not going to come running to you, you need to demonstrate a willingness to invest some time and effort in it before you will see any pay-offs and fully understand why so many other people use it.
I wonder how many of the "Vista sucks" crows are trying to run it on outdated hardware.
Why do I need to update my hardware? To run Vista...
Why do I need Vista as opposed to Windows XP? I'm a gamer and it has DirectX 10.
How many games today are taking advantage of DirectX 10? A handful...
So please explain to me what other advantages Vista will give me before I dig into my pocket and upgrade hardware that already runs everything that I need it to just fine at the moment.
I'm failing to see any reason to upgrade to Vista at all
Erm, apparently if we don't all upgrade to Vista, then Bill and Steve have assured us that the cute little Labrador puppy and the litter of even cuter tabby cat kittens get it.
Have Symantec do your home security & if it's anything like their PC products, the speed of any burglar's passage through your house will be reduced to an absolute crawl plus your house windows will keep popping open in order to distract him...
Yes - in as much as the parent post was singing the praises of OS X when, in reality, he should have been singing the praises of the video editing application.
If I receive a long email trail that someone somewhere is expecting me to act upon and which is unnecessarily long and convoluted, I just book a conference bridge and invite all the important parties to talk to me instead.
It never seems to be a problem for anyone since they know I'm prepared to take the problem seriously and do my best to fix it, plus I can ask the questions I need to, get answers quickly and make notes.
Email is useful to highlight an initial problem and who knows anything about that problem, but when there needs to be a lot more wordage, nothing is quicker than the telephone and people talking.
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It's been usable on my desktop for almost a decade but I don't own (or have any intention of owning) an iPod, I don't do video editing and find the GIMP does enough image editing that I'm ever likely to need. Other than that, on my Linux desktop I can play (and emulate) enough games for my need, surf the web happily, write documents and spreadsheets, and rip CDs. Therefore its fine for my "desktop" use.
But there are people who do want the equivalent of Adobe Photoshop or whatever the best Windows video apps are, on Linux. For them it's patently not worth them making the switch and I fully agree with them.
I don't personally care about the penetration of desktop Linux but if the aim is to get it running on as many desktop PCs as possible, then only the creators of the most popular Windows applications can assure that by porting those apps to Linux.
I've not done it recently but a couple of years ago, one of the best ways of proving whether or not your hardware would ever work with Linux was to just boot the PC from a bootable Knoppix disk, as Knoppix had the reputation of being able to find just about any piece of hardware that the Linux kernel could support.
If it didn't work in Knoppix then the chances were it would never work - at least in my experience.
But to be honest, the best approach with configuring Xorg is to do it in small steps, gradually getting the configuration better and better, rather than trying to get all of it right at once. And when you get an Xorg configuration that does work to a degree, back it up and GUARD IT WITH YOUR LIFE!!! You will ALWAYS screw things up and need to start again from a working xorg.conf, believe me.
The best thing you can do from here is some diligent Googling mentioning xorg.conf, the make of your video card, the make of your monitor and the resolution you are trying to achieve. There is always a slightly smarter person than you (or I) who's got things working a bit better and has put their xorg.conf on a web site somewhere for all to see which you, in turn, can use as a template to at least get started with.
Persevere with it, that's all I can say.
About four years ago I settled on Gentoo Linux and I'm still with it - as an experienced Linux person, I truly believe that the only way of having a fully optimal and stable system as much of the time as possible is to "do-it-yourself" with rolling updates that compile everything against the library versions your system currently has. Gentoo isn't perfect but it does its job most of the time and that's what counts.
I wouldn't say that Red Hat and SuSE "sold out" to commercial interests but they are certainly no longer contributing to the adoption of Linux on the desktop, preferring to sell Linux products more for the corporate server space.
Having said that, I tried Ubuntu recently and whilst I cannot consolidate my mind into buying into any distro that expects relatively frequent "wipe and fully reinstall" updates, I was impressed with the user friendliness of it - to the point where I've pointed friends of mine at trying it when they've asked about it, they all seem to still be using it (at least dual-booting it like you) and I've not had many questions or problems thrown at me by them.
So whilst Ubuntu is of no real use to me, I very much respect what they are doing and long may they continue with it as it will be those kinds of easy-to-use distros with good support tactics that will determine Linux's penetration in the long run.
These cultists are ardent students of the Book of Genesis in the bible who consider that all evil stems from Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden who were tempted to pluck a fruit from God's tree by the Devil in the form of a serpent.
The emblem of this fruit is carried openly upon the mind control boxes possessed by these cultists, who frequently gather in Starbucks and Internet cafes, openly displaying this emblem in order to attract other cultist colleagues into terrorist quangos to plan their revenge upon the rest of us.
Therefore, please keep an eye open for smartly dressed people carrying little white boxes bearing an apple emblem on them - they are not to be trusted. Remove their boxes from them and stamp on them, find out where they live, break into their houses and smach up their huge designer coffee tables and African dance memorabilia.
They MUST be stopped!
...presumably those birds from which said lessons about flying were obtained did not include any ostriches?
One problem with that statement - to BRAINstorm you need to be in possession of one said BRAIN.
Mind you, I've also heard that if you've half a mind to work for the RIAA or MPAA, then that's more than enough!
Yeah, we wish...
You're a record company that wants me to part with my hard-earned money to buy my music track-by-track at a price that's usually more expensive than just going to the cheapest CD vendor I can find and buying the CD...
You then expect me to pay that price on the basis that the compressed music format I'm buying is of lower quality than what's on the CD...
You're then saying that the music I download is protected to the point where I cannot share it with anyone else - unlike a CD which I can loan to a friend or family member to let them listen to...
And on top of all that, you're now saying that even when I've downloaded it for ME to use on MY PC and music players, I may be severely restricted in being able to do that also whereas just about any CD I buy plays on any music player I own and can be ripped with a free CD ripper on any OS I care to use...
My response is two words, the first being an Old-English coloquialism originating from the Battle of Agincourt and the second one being the word "off".
People, it's time to wake up and smell the coffee...
Buying a CD gives you something tangible - a shiny disk, a printed sleeve to read while in the lavatory undertaking your morning ablutions, and, to boot, a nice hard protective case to store it in to that you can file neatly and alphabetically on a shelf and gaze lovingly at occasionally along with your vast collection of other CDs...
And if you truly believe that a music CD only contains one or two good tracks, then you are listening to the wrong sort of music or not a true music fan - there is an ABSOLUTE WEALTH of good music out there spanning back hundreds of years and if you can take the time to research what you plan to buy carefully, you will rarely, if ever, be disappointed with your CD purchases...
So please STOP with this "paying for downloads" nonsense - like a moronic dwarf, it's not big and it's not clever.
If a music artist or group is not able to string together at least one album that is an absolute pleasure to listen to, then please ignore them until they either go the way Britney Spears has or release something that IS worth listening to.
And once you find that album, having avoided buying it in the rip-off merchant high street stores, you will understand that EVERY CD YOU OWN IS WELL WORTH THE MONEY YOU PAID FOR IT!!!
Rant mode off, this is a true music enthusiast signing off...
Well then get him to answer a few of the Vista gripes on here then! I'm sure he'll do better than some of the so-called "Vista Experts" on here and there's a few poor Vista-owning saps who could do with the help.
Oh, and if you have a Linux-using Labrador please let me know - I'm having problems getting 3D sound to work on My Dell XPS laptop with Gentoo so maybe he can give me a kernel .config file or two!
And if, by chance, you have a canine with expertise in Mac OS, one can only assume that it must be a neatly-coiffeured French poodle...
For example, my SanDisk USB drive completes copying immediately XP says it's finished, my PNY branded USB drive takes a second or two to finish and my cheap unbranded USB drive can take anything up to 20 or 30 seconds to complete. In each case, I watch when the LED stops flashing on all the drives and I guess it's something to do with the quality of the circuitry in each one.
These days I read listings VERY carefully!!! :-)
However, I had an interesting situation a few months ago having purchased three CDs from a seller in Germany. (I'm in the UK.) The seller stated discounted postage for multiple items in his listings but the Paypal invoice from him (which I couldn't change) didn't reflect the postage discount. I emailed him daily for 5 days asking for a correct invoice, on the 5th day I asked either for a correct invoice or his Paypal ID so I could just pay him directly.
He responded to the 5th email, gave me his Paypal ID and I paid him - in the Comments box in the Paypal payment I put in there it was payment for the 3 CDs.
One month went by and I hadn't received the CDs. Since this was last October in the UK, when there was a postal strike, I didn't see any point in chasing the seller sooner. Once the strike was over, I emailed him asking him politely where the CDs were, he responded by raising 3 non-paying bidder alerts against me. So I sent him a screen capture of the Paypal payment to him and asked him to remove the alerts. He promptly refunded my payment, told me that my payment was not acceptable as I had not put the item listing numbers in the Paypal message to him and left the alerts on.
At this point, I decided to try and outwit the seller. Forgoing the postage discount, I paid the original Paypal invoice to him which removed the Non-paying bidder alerts and then raised a complaint to eBay about not receiving the items. He then emailed me telling me that he would not sell to me as he refused to deal with "Polish crooks" and refunded my payment again.
At this point I realised that when I'd made my original Paypal payment to him, he'd seen that despite being in the UK I have an obviously Slavic surname and decided he wasn't going to sell to me on the basis of his belief that I was Polish. I did email him back, said it was none of his business anyway but that I am actually Ukrainian, not Polish - at which point he backtracked a little, said he had nothing personal against Ukrainians but I'd decided by this point enough was enough, told him he was a rascist and complained to eBay.
eBay removed the non-paying bidder alerts but I'd had a gutfull of the seller, went through his feedback history and saw some very rascist bad feedback he'd left for other buyers in the past - as well as a large number of mutually withdrawn bad feedbacks. I left him bad feedback stating he was a rascist, he responded in kind but with feedback stating I had sold HIM some dodgy copied Polish DVDs!!!
I complained to eBay about his totally irrelevant feedback, they did nothing about it as you'd expect, about a week later I got an email from the seller asking to do a mutual feedback withdrawal. Suffice it to say, I told him to shove it, realised bad feedback as a seller is worse than bad feedback as a buyer and that was the last I heard from him.
However, it's the first time I've heard of a seller refusing money on the basis of a buyer's heritage - what an idiot!
However, a lot of sellers do capitalise on the fact that the shipping cost is not always immediately evident and I doubt there is one buyer on eBay who has not been tricked by such sellers in the past - myself included.
Personally, if I'm looking through listings, I'd like to be able to list by TOTAL PRICE (Auction / Buy It Now Price + Shipping) - especially because I buy a lot of new (but obscure) CDs on eBay and use Amazon as a comparison site for prices. If I buy CDs from Amazon enough volume, shipping is free from them and therefore affects price comparisons with eBay.
Besides which, we all know a lot of people over-inflate shipping costs and reduce Auction/Buy It Now price to avoid paying higher listing and final valuation fees - this must cost eBay quite a bit in lost revenue and would therefore be in their interest to monitor declared shipping costs by sellers.
Alternatively, you could have downloaded one of the "support as much hardware as possible" distro boot disks like Knoppix and see if that picked up the NIC.
Again, you need to want to help yourself. If you're going to fall at the first hurdle then stay away from Linux - you don't need it.
As other posters have said, the art of installing Linux is to ensure you choose your hardware dilligently, especially with laptops. If you don't have the technical skills to install Linux, then why not buy a pre-installed Linux laptop?
You also need to bear in mind that using Linux defines a need for some personal responsibility, self determination and self motivation - there's no denying that the moment you start using it as a newbie then you're going to be on a steep learning curve. If you're not prepared to invest time in that or spend some time researching web sites and forums where other people may ahve experienced the same problems as you and published a fix or workaround, then don't use it. It's that simple.
And I'm afraid you're going to be a long time waiting for that call - Linux is not going to come running to you, you need to demonstrate a willingness to invest some time and effort in it before you will see any pay-offs and fully understand why so many other people use it.
Why do I need to update my hardware? To run Vista...
Why do I need Vista as opposed to Windows XP? I'm a gamer and it has DirectX 10.
How many games today are taking advantage of DirectX 10? A handful...
So please explain to me what other advantages Vista will give me before I dig into my pocket and upgrade hardware that already runs everything that I need it to just fine at the moment.
How about "Tarquin Fintimlimbimlimbimwhimbimlin Bus Stop Ftang Ftang Olay Biscuit Barrel"?
There are other free anti-virus products such as Avira and Avast - no biggie.
The Apple is cheaper over 3 or more years.
Yes, if you don't like playing that many games and don't want to run half of the applications you can run in Windows - or Linux.
Erm, apparently if we don't all upgrade to Vista, then Bill and Steve have assured us that the cute little Labrador puppy and the litter of even cuter tabby cat kittens get it.
Okay?
The second rule of Home Internet Security, is don't let Symantec talk about Home Internet Security.
Have Symantec do your home security & if it's anything like their PC products, the speed of any burglar's passage through your house will be reduced to an absolute crawl plus your house windows will keep popping open in order to distract him...
Yes - in as much as the parent post was singing the praises of OS X when, in reality, he should have been singing the praises of the video editing application.
It never seems to be a problem for anyone since they know I'm prepared to take the problem seriously and do my best to fix it, plus I can ask the questions I need to, get answers quickly and make notes.
Email is useful to highlight an initial problem and who knows anything about that problem, but when there needs to be a lot more wordage, nothing is quicker than the telephone and people talking.