From: mike@vlsivie.tuwien.ac.at (Michael Gschwind)
Subject: Re: Novell buys Unix Systems Laboratory
Organization: Vienna University of Technology
	<HSU.92Dec23172701@laphroaig.cs.hut.fi>
	<1992Dec26.213958.1958@fcom.cc.utah.edu>
Distribution: alt
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1992 14:05:32 GMT

In article <1992Dec26.213958.1958@fcom.cc.utah.edu> terry@cs.weber.edu (A Wizard of Earth C) writes:

   This says more about your local support, which is supposedly a "partner"
   with the foreign supplier and capable of providing a decent level of
   support to its customers.  If it can't, it's probably in violation of
   it's agreements with those foreign suppliers.  In my personal experience,
   support through local distributors has always been excellent; but then
   again, this may have more to do with the people I choose to do business
   with.

   Often in the past, I have seen "grey market" import of software into
   countries; rather than paying the higher "non-US" prices (which is what
   pays for local support), they purchase from "less expensive" dealers
   who buy directly from distributors in the US.  This is, of course,
   against the contractual agreements by the US distributors... sales to
   international destinations are generally allowed only through international
   distributors and at international pricing so that support is guaranteed.
   Is it any wonder that your local authorized distributors won't support
   product not purchased through them?  Pick the right people to do business
   with and your support will be excellent.

Unfortunately, this is not true. We've bought computers from Apollo
and HP, THE COMPANIES!!!!, not some illegal importer, and their
support was non-existant. Indeed, they did forward everything to
Chelmsford, MA! Support in Europe is non-existant, 1-800 lines do not
exist, and incompetent staff are sent out to fix problems. One reason
is market fragmentation (Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxemburg, the
Scandinavian countries etc are not very huge markets, so even if the
companies are present, they will generally have few staff.) So please
get you facts together in future before telling people who are
suffering from non-existant support that they are not dealing with the
right people. If HP the company is not the right company to buy HP
computers from, WHO IS???

   >Now the situation is changing rapidly, most unix tools and all the
   >development tools have been replaced with GNU variants and free 386 unixes
   >are getting stable enough to be used in commercial environments, not just
   >home use.

   I think the "support" you get from GNU tools, unless you pay a support
   company, is largely inferior to that you would get from, for instance,
   Sun Europe.  There is no guarantee that your bug reports will be acted
   upon, and, worse, there is no financial reward/penalty for your bugs
   being ignored.

I dunno about Sun, but HP/Apollo is *bad*.


mike
--

Michael Gschwind, Vienna University of Technology
mike@vlsivie.tuwien.ac.at	(*) BOZO is a registered 
(back in Vienna)                    trademark of Bush/Quayle 92
                                (*) UNIX is a registered 
                                    trademark of AT&T
     
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