[rescue] OT: Linux and USB on Intel

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 12:04:09PM -0400, Dave McGuire wrote:

> >It seems they are afraid that if they make finished product available
> >for free, no one will buy their support and service.
> 
>   Hmmmmmmm.  Kinda makes one think, eh? ;)

Yes, it does.  Their support was not very good in the past.  We'll see
if they've made improvements I guess.

>   Are vendors who sell high-ticket "service", especially in 
> billed-by-the-hour arrangements, really motivated to make sure their 
> systems don't fail in the first place?  In some cases, over the life of 
> a product, support contracts wind up costing more than the product 
> itself...which opens the door for the vendor making the product a 
> loss-leader to facilitate the sale of expensive support contracts.

Well, I think that Sun and SGI make pretty solid hardware.  Most of the
support I see is for shops with management too afraid to let their
people learn to take care of the systems.

When I was at NASA, I would see problems that were literally 60 second
fixes, and they'd call support.

It's really frustrating.


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