News from PANUG/BizNix - October 3, 2003
http://panug.org - http://biznix.org


OFFSHORE SUPPORT
by Ed Sawicki - Accelerated Learning Center / Tailored Computers

Twice this week I've had to deal with technical
support and the experience was painful. The first
was my Lexar USB memory drive. Lexar calls it a
JumpDrive. I use it with Linux and it had been
working but it recently stopped working.

Support is available only via e-mail so I sent a
message describing the problem. A day later, I
received a response from someone at tauraweb.com
who asked which operating system I was using. I
did a whois lookup on his IP address (from the
e-mail headers). It was India.

The next day, he told me that Linux is not one
of the supported operating systems. I wrote back
saying that the product's packaging doesn't say
which operating systems are supported and that
the JumpDrive also doesn't work with Windows.

Another day passes and he sends me a procedure
for mounting the JumpDrive on a Linux system
(Step 1. Click on the footprint in the lower
left hand corner of the screen....) I respond by
telling him that his procedure would work if the
JumpDrive would work - but it doesn't. My JumpDrive
is broken as I had mentioned in my original message.

Another day passes... Having an interactive e-mail
dialog with people in India is maddening.

The second was Intel technical support but this time
I could use the telephone so it was less painful
time-wise. The man in customer service didn't know
what a Intel PRO/1000 MT Quad Port Server Adapter was
and it took several minutes to find out. I'm not sure
where I was calling but it didn't sound like this
country. Once I was connected to the tech support
technician (who was in this country), the service was
excellent.


MORE SCO
The following Web page speaks to the SCO issue:
http://oss.sgi.com/letter_100103.txt


FEEDBACK

Ray Robert:
I take issue with the remark that Ken Barber was
"punish[ed] for promoting the use of Open Source
software in Oregon State government."  The state runs
many, many open source, UNIX, and NetWare applications.
There isn't and hasn't been any state campaign against
open source or for Microsoft.

Ken dealt with one particular agency (ODOT). ODOT is a
Microsoft shop that didn't wish to diversify into Linux.
A factor in its decision was the high degree of
integration among its various systems using Visual Basic.
There are times when an organization needs to make a
decision on its systems. At other times, employee and
consultant criticism is merely a distraction.  

Right this minute I'm not sure I'm buying the "Cyber
InSecurity" report's paean in praise of diversity of
systems. I've spent the morning patching our Linux systems.
I spent much of yesterday patching our Unix systems only
to get another dozen patch notifications today and a CERT
bulletin on OpenSSH. Standardizing on one system is looking
pretty good to me.


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