At the large local government I work at (16000+ machines...ours specifically number over 1000) we have many cases of bizarre spyware issues causing hours of outages on different machines...all under WinNT 4 and very restricted user permissions.
I also get many complaints from workers about their home systems and after consulting with the most novice users bi-weekly about how to avoid these problems they come back again and again and again. It's hard to keep people up to speed when the ground shifts and new methods of infection abound.
Thus my advice is like many others here. I evaluate what the users need from their computers and then suggest a timetable for switching to the Mac. I had one very novice user consult me on a business/personal laptop purchase and I routed the person to a Mac G4. I have not heard from the user since then and it's been five months. That's all that counts...the person is good to go, will have few if any problems and can concentrate on WORK. My windows users have ten different things to keep in the backs of their minds on what to avoid on the "web" at any given time. That's BEHIND a corporate firewall. Confusion reigns.
So yeah...whine and gripe about the Mac vs PC issue. I do different work on each platform. I'm an expert user on both so I'm biased only towards two things: functionality and required maintenance. Right now all my novice users are being steered towards Mac purchases. Those that have macs love them and that's all that counts.
>>Mt St Helens when it blew in the 80's? It blasted more toxins and pollutants into the atmosphere than mankind has since the beginning of the industrial revolution.
Uhhhh...no it hasn't. But then again neither I nor you are backing up either of our assertions with information...how many cubic kilometers of dust and ash were release? Not sure? Go pick up a study and read up on it.
likewise...if you're unsure of any of the global warming studies done out there...go find one...and read it! Some are very dry, and boring for many I assure you but the science is there...and it doesn't lay out a concrete series of future facts. Science as always only draws lines from parallels of known data.
As a Canadian I know it's going to be national concern #1 very soon because we've let atrophy our navy and the arctic sea ice is disppearing so fucking fast that we're going to have to build 10 to 15 ship armada just to police all that new open water. Other nations have even started planting rogue flags to claim territory we haven't been using.
in the end all our posturing is psuhed aside by cold hard fact...Earth warms = less sea and land ice. That is happening now.
Frickin hilarious is right...I've been listening to friends drone on and on about Rush for years...blehhh.
I have video of some of these guys spontaneously breaking out into a chorus of drunken air drumming (all four!) to some Rush track...don't ask which one please I might have to kill you.
BTW Rush has this great track with the chorus "take off to the great white North". Hosers...*sigh*
Next week it'll be a BNL career retrospective - who knows!
I'm in networking and administration. I got here via an athletic career (Track and field) and several jobs that had nothing to do with what I do now. I've done everything from shoe store management to construction to general labour.
Ultimately the "job" thing is whatever puts food on the table or helps yoru local community function (coo-op farming comes to mind).
My father started his career doing systems programming for the early generation IBM mainframes that ran the (Canadian) Bank of Montreal/Montreal Trust systems in the mid 1960's. He had a staff of 18 at one point, but barely made enough money to get a mortgage. He offered to quit unless he could get a raise matching the "private" sector offerings. Even with THAT salary he couldn't afford a mortgage, nor even qualify for one. Which is funny since he was essentially a "mortgage specialist" overseeing the punchcard systems and doing actuarial forensics when things got "lost".
To make this story short (hard to do), he quit afetr accepting a job aty a new bank. The new bank cancelled the job several days before he started and having just quit his prvious job he marched in to a Canada manpower office to see what was available there and then. By later that day he was tarring house foundations for almost as much as he made in his previous job. He was promoted very soon for offering to work for less with the expectation that he could learn from the master trades people. They gave him a raise and he began a 30+ year in the building trades...a job that has since taken him from the Arctic building early-warning radar installations to Brunei building housing complexes for big oil conttractors.
The lesson I'm projecting is the point where he was wearing a three piece suit applying for a construction labour job...remember that part. The 1930's weren't even that kind to people so be thankful that at the very least you could get a job at McDonald's to pay the rent if you had to.
Life is one big transition, and if this kid is good enough he'll stay in school, or work on something else and save for the day when he lucks into a good coding job or meets a connection that can find him an employer looking for his secific talents. Rueing the fact that he can only work for people who prey on others is a very weak argument. Someone else is spending their days and money trying to undo all that work he's enabled them to do
The only advice I can offer is good luck and happy adventures. My dad doesn't regret his career change one iota by the way.
>I'll give you this one. I have no idea why the US
>chose to get involved. However, I believe that it
>was actually NATO that decided that something had
>to be done about the situation in Kosovo.
Kosovo was threatening to unleash what has been unleashed in Chechnya, Uxebkistan, Georgia and Ossetia - rampant and virulant support via Saudi Arabia for the local Muslims. In this case the support was warranted. Serbia saw payback for a 1000 year old grudge and was bearing down on a helpdess civilian populatrion protected by a weak separatist force.
When all was said and done it was threatening to invoplved Greece (through Macedonia which was seeing some ethnic strife emerging) as well so it was important to NOT have a racial war spreading across central Europe.
It's easy for these things to spread. It might be said that had we NOT gotten involved that Al Qaeda operatives might have taken advantage of the fight to "help" the muslims in Kosovo and bringing the Taliban to central Europe as well.
Don't underestimate the foresight of such operations...they they result in a mundane if tense peace they are a huge success.
I work for a large Toronto Employer *cough*...and we've been ordering IBM Desktop (8194-E4U) form factor NetVista models since last summer...almost EVERY hard drive in these puppies failed...the Maxtor slimline 40 GB drives (sub-1 inch).
We just got the callback for mass-replacement that we've been asking for. We've so far seen 60- 70% of our drives fail.
This kind of thing should not be surprising though as large companies are likely to have large orders for third-party parts and materials. When once source goes "bad" it can have this kind of an effect
I'll give IBM's customer service an A++ for promptness and courtesy though - they've been Golden in helping us get the replacement parts quickly (next day!)
This is getting off-topic, but if you believe that the entire Middle East was undone all by itself then you need to brush up on your history.
If we didn't need the oil we'd have gone from there ages ago and NOONE would be havign these problems. I dare you to suggest that the "West" withdraw from the middle east entirely - without being lughed at.
Not so easy huh?
Sure someone else would likely attempt to exter undue influence (India, China, Britain, France, Russia?) just like any other energy-starved nation would, but since the U.S. is the prime military influence there they are the main focus of vitriol.
How many people died being gassed in Iran during the Iran Iraq war...that lasted 8 YEARS! WWII didn't even last that long. Iran was sending 8 year olds into battle because they ran out of fighting-age men for crying out loud. I bet that never made the news.
So in your human-death numbers game...we're winning pretty nicely.
It was WE in the computer field over tall these yers (Incl. M$) that helped to convince millions of users out there just how easy and fun computing could be. The we turn the tables and denigrate them for not knowing how ports work.
I don't expect you to know how your fuel injection engine works, nor would I expect you to be able to pull it apart and put it back together again.
So while I sympathize with you on just how ignorant Jane and Joe Computer User can be, almost every technology is an abstraction to them.
Like I say to my regular users (all 265 of them): "You may feel dumb as doornails not understanding some things I navigate with ease...but I've known senior programmers who couldn't take a _doorknob_ apart and put it together again." that usually puts things in a different light.
I work at a VERY large Municipal Govt. in Canada with 16000+ pcs across the whole org.
This crud is popping up all over the place, and the install dialogues wrapped in IE Windows are made to look just like system pop-ups or system windows. Very confusing to the users. It's driving me nearly insane
My main concern are the home users. We get tons of incoming viruses and spam mails generated by accidental home pc invasions and installations. My advice after helping guide users in trying to clean this up is to recommend what's ben mentioned many times in this topic: Linux for the power users or MacOS 9/OS X for the general users.
At 150 to 500.00 per pop (to start with!) to clean the home system of junk that sits next to theior last five years of tax filings and bank records (QuickBooks anyone?). Any premium paid for the Mac is paid off in maintenance costs deferred by not needing massive AV protection or complete firewalling to be usable
My observation is that home PC use (Windows), for my clients, is getting intolerable very quickly
My users do that all the time, if I am to believe that all those candies sitting in urns on desks serve a purpose!
And to think my wife works at Nestle!
JB
I say re-compile the Slashcode and stick a Spellchecker in there!
Mind you I'm to blame many times too...
There/Their/They're Loose/Lose It's/Its
I'm losing my mind (and a piece of my soul) every time I see the apostrophe-s in weird places. It used to be that in Journalism class (in 1995 no less!) we would get 1/10th of a letter grade for every spelling or grammatical error found in a printed piece (Journal, Newspaper, etc...online would eventually count where newpapers of CNN-types are concerned).
I had to try hard as hell to get five or six errors...in Arkansas no less.
Nowadays even the Globe and Mail here has numerous errors and I'd have gotten 30 or 40 my first week alone.
This is an online forum so let's be a little easy of people...lest you be stabbed in the heart from being too freaking hard on people.
Just let your soul whither my friend...it's only gonna get worse anyway;)
Yeah...this from the same guy who is bringing us SCO-girl!
http://hope-2000.org/smo/rumpel/pics/Unixbabes/SCO/sco.jpg
While the BSD babes are probably overflowing with personality...your "Linux Babes" directory (http://hope-2000.org/smo/rumpel/pics/Unixbabes/Li nux/)is also a bit too large to toss the Linux users into the flames of mediocrity;)
JB
No kidding eh?
I have been reading up on Serial ATA wondering aloud the whole time that FireWire was a slithgly better deal (Powered bus) anyway.
FireWire bus not strong enough power-wise? You have an adapter A' la the Serial ATA power connector.
Hot swappable, blah blah blah. Everyone here know FireWire...AND they just rolled out 800MBs Firewire! Why haven't there been any mentions along the ine of:
Serial ATA: "Really cool but we already have onboard FireWire...let's comapre the two!"
I fauly Apple to some degree for not championing FireWire hard enough in the wintel world despite its superior implementation and the fact that virtually every firewire device involves a FireWire to IDE bridge fo some sort. The power provisions are good too: FireWire devices can provide or consume up to 45W of power. Obviously regular Hard Disks will require the extra power but that's assumed.
I was an early adopter of the Newton MP 2000 ($1100 USD!!). Starving athlete my ass! I wanted one, and did not regret it until it was stolen in 1999(boo hoo).
In the intervening three years I have become a full time PC desktop and networking support tech in local City Govt. We are exposed to lots of palmtop testing opportunities for our urban planning inspectors. I have seen and supported many Palm variants as well as the nice new iPaq and Sony handhelds. These are all very nice and synch well...BUT:
I just re-purchased a Newton MP 2100 and can't wait to get my PC dongle so I can load it up. It's only after being separated from it that I realize how good it is still. For thos of you who haven't seen or test-driven it please try one if you can. Get a trashed one for 10.00 just to look at if you have to. The Newton 2.0 systems are what PDA's should work like...even if colour and size could be tweaked a little (thinner - not smaller!).
Anyway...Heft aside...the Newton is fantastic for note and drawing uses...I can take written and text notes with little trouble. Once you tune it to yoru Handwriting it pretty much runs 80-90% accurate. The spellchecking and word checking tools are a double click (tap on the misspelled word) away, so correcting the mistakes is very easy. You can actually put the HW Recognition into a cursive mode of printed mode as well. I tend to write in the non-conversion mode so it miniaturizes my written text for reading later if I'm in a hurry.
To finish - I use a blackberry for synching my GroupWise tasks,To-Dos, and Agenda (Calandar). But I think I'll be leaving that in it's cradle in favour of my newton again if I can get the tasks and to-dos to synch (we'll see)
I have several clients who I am trying to "wean" off of Inter.net.
The problem largely has to do with the succession of mergers that has taken place leading to Inter.net's ownership of companies like Interlog (Vancouver BC).
Last fall one of my clients was experiencing issues with invoices never showing up for their ISP service and web hosting. They work all over teh world so internet service is critical for them and they spend a lot per month. The office manager/treasurer of the client called to ask Inter.net for an invoice so they could pay them. Inter.net obliged and fixed their records, but the next day or so their collectiosn department callde up demanding payment within two days or their service would be cut. They paid of course, but it was insulting for them to constantly remind them of the problems, only to be called back by the collections people.
I moved them to Bell Nexxia within two months - internet connection, phone, IP services and web hosting in one fell swoop. Not a single problem since.
I imagine that they are so far gone on their client's records that they are desperate to get paid when a problem DOES surface with unpaid services...except that it's often been the client reminding them of this problem!
Anyone else know of these kinds of problems in detail? I'd like to know more if you do.
Slashdot Mirror
At the large local government I work at (16000+ machines...ours specifically number over 1000) we have many cases of bizarre spyware issues causing hours of outages on different machines...all under WinNT 4 and very restricted user permissions.
I also get many complaints from workers about their home systems and after consulting with the most novice users bi-weekly about how to avoid these problems they come back again and again and again. It's hard to keep people up to speed when the ground shifts and new methods of infection abound.
Thus my advice is like many others here. I evaluate what the users need from their computers and then suggest a timetable for switching to the Mac. I had one very novice user consult me on a business/personal laptop purchase and I routed the person to a Mac G4. I have not heard from the user since then and it's been five months. That's all that counts...the person is good to go, will have few if any problems and can concentrate on WORK. My windows users have ten different things to keep in the backs of their minds on what to avoid on the "web" at any given time. That's BEHIND a corporate firewall. Confusion reigns.
So yeah...whine and gripe about the Mac vs PC issue. I do different work on each platform. I'm an expert user on both so I'm biased only towards two things: functionality and required maintenance. Right now all my novice users are being steered towards Mac purchases. Those that have macs love them and that's all that counts.
As my Mother-in law would say:
"Zungo Shenzi!"
You have to be careful of the Mother-in law ;)
JB
>>Mt St Helens when it blew in the 80's? It blasted more toxins and pollutants into the atmosphere than mankind has since the beginning of the industrial revolution.
Uhhhh...no it hasn't. But then again neither I nor you are backing up either of our assertions with information...how many cubic kilometers of dust and ash were release? Not sure? Go pick up a study and read up on it.
likewise...if you're unsure of any of the global warming studies done out there...go find one...and read it! Some are very dry, and boring for many I assure you but the science is there...and it doesn't lay out a concrete series of future facts. Science as always only draws lines from parallels of known data.
As a Canadian I know it's going to be national concern #1 very soon because we've let atrophy our navy and the arctic sea ice is disppearing so fucking fast that we're going to have to build 10 to 15 ship armada just to police all that new open water. Other nations have even started planting rogue flags to claim territory we haven't been using.
in the end all our posturing is psuhed aside by cold hard fact...Earth warms = less sea and land ice. That is happening now.
Frickin hilarious is right...I've been listening to friends drone on and on about Rush for years...blehhh.
I have video of some of these guys spontaneously breaking out into a chorus of drunken air drumming (all four!) to some Rush track...don't ask which one please I might have to kill you.
BTW Rush has this great track with the chorus "take off to the great white North". Hosers...*sigh*
Next week it'll be a BNL career retrospective - who knows!
JB
Oh Jesus...you made me laugh so hard i woke up the house.
Thanks for the laugh.
JB
Oh for Chrissakes...
They NEVER would have seen this happen if they'd used my state-of-the-art Lemon Juice and Copper Wire UPS array.
Best part is drinking the expired battery acid of course. You need a lot of lemons.
Learn dammit! Bring a juicer next time!
I'm in networking and administration. I got here via an athletic career (Track and field) and several jobs that had nothing to do with what I do now. I've done everything from shoe store management to construction to general labour.
Ultimately the "job" thing is whatever puts food on the table or helps yoru local community function (coo-op farming comes to mind).
My father started his career doing systems programming for the early generation IBM mainframes that ran the (Canadian) Bank of Montreal/Montreal Trust systems in the mid 1960's. He had a staff of 18 at one point, but barely made enough money to get a mortgage. He offered to quit unless he could get a raise matching the "private" sector offerings. Even with THAT salary he couldn't afford a mortgage, nor even qualify for one. Which is funny since he was essentially a "mortgage specialist" overseeing the punchcard systems and doing actuarial forensics when things got "lost".
To make this story short (hard to do), he quit afetr accepting a job aty a new bank. The new bank cancelled the job several days before he started and having just quit his prvious job he marched in to a Canada manpower office to see what was available there and then. By later that day he was tarring house foundations for almost as much as he made in his previous job. He was promoted very soon for offering to work for less with the expectation that he could learn from the master trades people. They gave him a raise and he began a 30+ year in the building trades...a job that has since taken him from the Arctic building early-warning radar installations to Brunei building housing complexes for big oil conttractors.
The lesson I'm projecting is the point where he was wearing a three piece suit applying for a construction labour job...remember that part. The 1930's weren't even that kind to people so be thankful that at the very least you could get a job at McDonald's to pay the rent if you had to.
Life is one big transition, and if this kid is good enough he'll stay in school, or work on something else and save for the day when he lucks into a good coding job or meets a connection that can find him an employer looking for his secific talents. Rueing the fact that he can only work for people who prey on others is a very weak argument. Someone else is spending their days and money trying to undo all that work he's enabled them to do
The only advice I can offer is good luck and happy adventures. My dad doesn't regret his career change one iota by the way.
>Kosovo:
>I'll give you this one. I have no idea why the US >chose to get involved. However, I believe that it >was actually NATO that decided that something had >to be done about the situation in Kosovo.
Kosovo was threatening to unleash what has been unleashed in Chechnya, Uxebkistan, Georgia and Ossetia - rampant and virulant support via Saudi Arabia for the local Muslims. In this case the support was warranted. Serbia saw payback for a 1000 year old grudge and was bearing down on a helpdess civilian populatrion protected by a weak separatist force.
When all was said and done it was threatening to invoplved Greece (through Macedonia which was seeing some ethnic strife emerging) as well so it was important to NOT have a racial war spreading across central Europe.
It's easy for these things to spread. It might be said that had we NOT gotten involved that Al Qaeda operatives might have taken advantage of the fight to "help" the muslims in Kosovo and bringing the Taliban to central Europe as well.
Don't underestimate the foresight of such operations...they they result in a mundane if tense peace they are a huge success.
Now if only that model had been used in Iraq.
I work for a large Toronto Employer *cough*...and we've been ordering IBM Desktop (8194-E4U) form factor NetVista models since last summer...almost EVERY hard drive in these puppies failed...the Maxtor slimline 40 GB drives (sub-1 inch).
We just got the callback for mass-replacement that we've been asking for. We've so far seen 60- 70% of our drives fail.
This kind of thing should not be surprising though as large companies are likely to have large orders for third-party parts and materials. When once source goes "bad" it can have this kind of an effect
I'll give IBM's customer service an A++ for promptness and courtesy though - they've been Golden in helping us get the replacement parts quickly (next day!)
This is getting off-topic, but if you believe that the entire Middle East was undone all by itself then you need to brush up on your history.
If we didn't need the oil we'd have gone from there ages ago and NOONE would be havign these problems. I dare you to suggest that the "West" withdraw from the middle east entirely - without being lughed at.
Not so easy huh?
Sure someone else would likely attempt to exter undue influence (India, China, Britain, France, Russia?) just like any other energy-starved nation would, but since the U.S. is the prime military influence there they are the main focus of vitriol.
How many people died being gassed in Iran during the Iran Iraq war...that lasted 8 YEARS! WWII didn't even last that long. Iran was sending 8 year olds into battle because they ran out of fighting-age men for crying out loud. I bet that never made the news.
So in your human-death numbers game...we're winning pretty nicely.
Stop comlaining.
Okay buddy...let's remember one thing:
It was WE in the computer field over tall these yers (Incl. M$) that helped to convince millions of users out there just how easy and fun computing could be. The we turn the tables and denigrate them for not knowing how ports work.
I don't expect you to know how your fuel injection engine works, nor would I expect you to be able to pull it apart and put it back together again.
So while I sympathize with you on just how ignorant Jane and Joe Computer User can be, almost every technology is an abstraction to them.
Like I say to my regular users (all 265 of them): "You may feel dumb as doornails not understanding some things I navigate with ease...but I've known senior programmers who couldn't take a _doorknob_ apart and put it together again." that usually puts things in a different light.
Go easy on the Peons - they pay our bills.
JB
No kidding eh?
I work at a VERY large Municipal Govt. in Canada with 16000+ pcs across the whole org.
This crud is popping up all over the place, and the install dialogues wrapped in IE Windows are made to look just like system pop-ups or system windows. Very confusing to the users. It's driving me nearly insane
My main concern are the home users. We get tons of incoming viruses and spam mails generated by accidental home pc invasions and installations. My advice after helping guide users in trying to clean this up is to recommend what's ben mentioned many times in this topic: Linux for the power users or MacOS 9/OS X for the general users.
At 150 to 500.00 per pop (to start with!) to clean the home system of junk that sits next to theior last five years of tax filings and bank records (QuickBooks anyone?). Any premium paid for the Mac is paid off in maintenance costs deferred by not needing massive AV protection or complete firewalling to be usable
My observation is that home PC use (Windows), for my clients, is getting intolerable very quickly
My users do that all the time, if I am to believe that all those candies sitting in urns on desks serve a purpose! And to think my wife works at Nestle! JB
Waaaay off-topic (spawned?)
;)
Sigh...I agree
I say re-compile the Slashcode and stick a Spellchecker in there!
Mind you I'm to blame many times too...
There/Their/They're
Loose/Lose
It's/Its
I'm losing my mind (and a piece of my soul) every time I see the apostrophe-s in weird places. It used to be that in Journalism class (in 1995 no less!) we would get 1/10th of a letter grade for every spelling or grammatical error found in a printed piece (Journal, Newspaper, etc...online would eventually count where newpapers of CNN-types are concerned).
I had to try hard as hell to get five or six errors...in Arkansas no less.
Nowadays even the Globe and Mail here has numerous errors and I'd have gotten 30 or 40 my first week alone.
This is an online forum so let's be a little easy of people...lest you be stabbed in the heart from being too freaking hard on people.
Just let your soul whither my friend...it's only gonna get worse anyway
Yeah...this from the same guy who is bringing us SCO-girl! http://hope-2000.org/smo/rumpel/pics/Unixbabes/SCO /sco.jpg
While the BSD babes are probably overflowing with personality...your "Linux Babes" directory (http://hope-2000.org/smo/rumpel/pics/Unixbabes/Li nux/)is also a bit too large to toss the Linux users into the flames of mediocrity ;)
JB
No kidding eh? I have been reading up on Serial ATA wondering aloud the whole time that FireWire was a slithgly better deal (Powered bus) anyway. FireWire bus not strong enough power-wise? You have an adapter A' la the Serial ATA power connector. Hot swappable, blah blah blah. Everyone here know FireWire...AND they just rolled out 800MBs Firewire! Why haven't there been any mentions along the ine of: Serial ATA: "Really cool but we already have onboard FireWire...let's comapre the two!" I fauly Apple to some degree for not championing FireWire hard enough in the wintel world despite its superior implementation and the fact that virtually every firewire device involves a FireWire to IDE bridge fo some sort. The power provisions are good too: FireWire devices can provide or consume up to 45W of power. Obviously regular Hard Disks will require the extra power but that's assumed.
I was an early adopter of the Newton MP 2000 ($1100 USD!!). Starving athlete my ass! I wanted one, and did not regret it until it was stolen in 1999(boo hoo).
In the intervening three years I have become a full time PC desktop and networking support tech in local City Govt. We are exposed to lots of palmtop testing opportunities for our urban planning inspectors. I have seen and supported many Palm variants as well as the nice new iPaq and Sony handhelds. These are all very nice and synch well...BUT:
I just re-purchased a Newton MP 2100 and can't wait to get my PC dongle so I can load it up. It's only after being separated from it that I realize how good it is still. For thos of you who haven't seen or test-driven it please try one if you can. Get a trashed one for 10.00 just to look at if you have to. The Newton 2.0 systems are what PDA's should work like...even if colour and size could be tweaked a little (thinner - not smaller!).
Anyway...Heft aside...the Newton is fantastic for note and drawing uses...I can take written and text notes with little trouble. Once you tune it to yoru Handwriting it pretty much runs 80-90% accurate. The spellchecking and word checking tools are a double click (tap on the misspelled word) away, so correcting the mistakes is very easy. You can actually put the HW Recognition into a cursive mode of printed mode as well. I tend to write in the non-conversion mode so it miniaturizes my written text for reading later if I'm in a hurry.
To finish - I use a blackberry for synching my GroupWise tasks,To-Dos, and Agenda (Calandar). But I think I'll be leaving that in it's cradle in favour of my newton again if I can get the tasks and to-dos to synch (we'll see)
I have several clients who I am trying to "wean" off of Inter.net.
The problem largely has to do with the succession of mergers that has taken place leading to Inter.net's ownership of companies like Interlog (Vancouver BC).
Last fall one of my clients was experiencing issues with invoices never showing up for their ISP service and web hosting. They work all over teh world so internet service is critical for them and they spend a lot per month. The office manager/treasurer of the client called to ask Inter.net for an invoice so they could pay them. Inter.net obliged and fixed their records, but the next day or so their collectiosn department callde up demanding payment within two days or their service would be cut. They paid of course, but it was insulting for them to constantly remind them of the problems, only to be called back by the collections people.
I moved them to Bell Nexxia within two months - internet connection, phone, IP services and web hosting in one fell swoop. Not a single problem since.
I imagine that they are so far gone on their client's records that they are desperate to get paid when a problem DOES surface with unpaid services...except that it's often been the client reminding them of this problem!
Anyone else know of these kinds of problems in detail? I'd like to know more if you do.
JB