Date: Sun, 13 Jul 1997 21:58:48 -0600 From: Joshua Fielden <shag@concentric.net> To: "Joel N. Weber II" <devnull@gnu.ai.mit.edu> Cc: bob@luke.pmr.com, joelh@gnu.ai.mit.edu, davidn@labs.usn.blaze.net.au, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: My opinion about freebsd (fwd) Message-ID: <33C9A3F8.41C67EA6@concentric.net> References: <199707131327.JAA14007@ethanol.gnu.ai.mit.edu>
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Joel N. Weber II wrote: > Support is also often rather meaningless; I've found, for example, that > I'm much more competent than the tech support people at Compaq. And > I'm no hardware expert. A month ago, I'd never even installed a SCSI > drive on a machine... > > Anyway, IMHO many organizations promise support, but few of them actually > come through. > > Nevertheless, orgainzations who don't understand the technology often > have to have competent people. And if you have to deal with things > yourself, you're much better off with free software, where you can > hire any competent person to solve your problems, rather than being > stuck with a potentially unhelpful vendor. I have done internal and external support on both Mac and Win platforms, and the one thing I have noticed is the smaller the organization, the better support you get. When you start getting into larger companies, they merely hire warm bodies who can pass a basic proficiency test, just to get people answering the phones, and there is no internal access to the people who make things tick. In smaller companies, where they may only have 3-5 people answering support calls, every call needs to "count" more, and the actual rep has a much better chance of being able to flag down the person who wrote the program, or did the QA testing, and query them specifically, in order to get a more specific and personal answer. It's also easier to circulate new information among a smaller group, and compare notes quicker. This means new bugs are isolated and found quicker, and the overall support gets better as new workarounds/incompatabilities are fully circulated within hours, rather than days or weeks. My $.02 JF
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