*BSD News Article 41346


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From: ptaipale@pc139_92.trs.ntc.nokia.com (Pekka J Taipale)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc,comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: Linux thoroughly insulted by Infoworld!
Date: 20 Jan 1995 23:14:35 GMT
Organization: Finns for Global Warming
Lines: 34
Message-ID: <PTAIPALE.95Jan21011435@pc139_92.trs.ntc.nokia.com>
References: <950116203411@lambada> <1995Jan18.214037.6088@cs.cornell.edu>
	<3fk4hi$iu8@solaris.cc.vt.edu>
	<PTAIPALE.95Jan19172215@pc139_92.trs.ntc.nokia.com>
	<tporczykD2o48C.KEt@netcom.com>
Reply-To: Pekka.Taipale@ntc.nokia.com
NNTP-Posting-Host: pc139_92.trs.ntc.nokia.com
In-reply-to: tporczyk@netcom.com's message of Thu, 19 Jan 1995 19:45:48 GMT

In article <tporczykD2o48C.KEt@netcom.com> tporczyk@netcom.com (Tony Porczyk) writes:
>True, but please remember that USENET support is self-selecting, that
>is, you may receive 20 replies to one problem and none to another.  

Yes, that is really so very true. As I said, I don't get answer always.

>It
>is totally volunteer-based, and you can't _demand_ it, which is what
>many managers want as a psychological assurance.  

Yes, even though in practise, even if I _can_ _demand_ support from
some company, it doesn't mean that I'm going to get it anyway, and we
are where we started. I can get good support from some companies and
some products; unfortunately this is not much better than the free
software syndrome of getting support for only some problems.

But, for managers, it of course helps if they can say "If you don't
help us, we won't buy from you any more, and you lose money". It
doesn't make the problem disappear, but I admit that it is important
to be able to accuse someone else.

>I used to work in tech support for a major software company.  We
>_encouraged_ our customers to use email once the initial call was
>logged.  That way we could get all the info we needed in a precise way
>(including any necessary debug dumps, etc.), and we could respond in
>kind.  The convenience factors are too obvious to discuss.

That's nice. Too many software companies still want to talk on the
phone when mail would be more effective. I understand that somewhat as
well. It's important to remain in personal touch with customers, hear
their tones, and perhaps receive a few innovative insults.

--
Pekka.Taipale@ntc.nokia.com