Justtechjobs.com Find a programming school near you






Online Campus Both


php3-list | 199903

Re: [PHP3] [Getting OT] Linux + Support From: Richard Lynch (lynch <email protected>)
Date: 03/04/99

At 7:01 PM 3/4/99, Chad Cunningham wrote:
>Exactly. In a corporate environment, down time costs money. The internet

In *any* environment, down time costs money. It costs resources. It costs
people-hours. It just plain costs.

>is fine, it's where I get all my support :) But when you have an important
>app that you can't run, you need it up NOW, not in a few hours when
>someone responds to your newsgroup post. The lack of quality support is
>out there, and I think it plagues these companies that are suddenly
>claiming to support linux. That's why I feel right now that oracle is a
>better choice for mission critical apps.

I dunno... I've frequently waited longer for phone support than I have for
a reply e-mail on this list. :-)

I truly believe that blanket statements about one form of support being
superior are misleading at best.

For example, Microsoft phone support, for the 3 or 4 times I've used it
goes like this:

1. Wait about 3-5 minutes for a non-technical person to answer the phone.

2. Use enough buzzwords and hard, cold facts, with rapid descriptions of
the sources of the problem you have eliminated, to convince said non-techie
that you have, in fact, found a bug in Microsoft software. [Not that
finding a bug is exactly a difficult task, mind you.]

3. The non-techie then realize that they can't possibly help you by telling
you to follow the directions, so passes you on to an "engineer".

[Note: It took me a little practice to get the first three steps down. I
used to spend several iterations of 1 & 2 going through inane suggestions
from non-technical phone support personnel.]

4. The engineer answers the phone fairly quickly, and you repeat Step 2,
but leave out the buzzwords in favor of correct terminology, and give any
guesses as to what their "programmer" screwed up.

5. The "engineer" then verifies that you have, in fact, found a bug by
reproducing your conditions.

6. The "engineer" then gives you a convoluted work-around that is
significantly inferior to what you have already done as a stop-gap measure.

7. You tell the "engineer" you want a patch, not a work-around: You
already have a better work-around.

8. The "engineer" insists that you try their work-around, and that it's
much superior to yours.

9. You agree, because you're just too tired to fight Microsoft anymore.

10. The "engineer" calls you up at 9 am in the friggin' morning a few days
later, when any real hacker is asleep, and wakes your ass up to find out if
their stupid work-around worked for you and if they can "close" the
"incident".

11. You tell the "engineer" no, and go back to step 10, or just say "yes",
even though you're way too busy to test their work-around. Meanwhile,
you're still stuck with some disgusting stop-gap measure because Microsoft
won't fix their known bugs if there's a work-around, no matter how terrible
performance might be with the work-around.

But that's just *my* experience in the 3 or 4 "incidents" I've had with
Microsoft support. YMMV.

-- "TANSTAAFL" Rich lynch <email protected> webmaster@ and www. all of:
R&B/jazz/blues/rock - jademaze.com music industry org - chatmusic.com
acoustic/funk/world-beat - astrakelly.com sculptures - olivierledoux.com
my own nascent company - l-i-e.com cool coffeehouse - uncommonground.com 

--
PHP 3 Mailing List   http://www.php.net/
To unsubscribe send an empty message to php3-unsubscribe <email protected>
To subscribe to the digest list:  php3-digest-subscribe <email protected>
For help: php3-help <email protected>  Archive:  http://www.php.net/mailsearch.php3
List administrator:  zeev-list-admin <email protected>