We don't have any plain-vanilla network environments. No shrink-wrapped knowledge base encompasses all the problems that really affect us. This just doesn't make sense. We use The Molloy Group's Top Of Mind with great success in first-call resolution, despite the fact that we don't use any of the canned knowledge bases. The vendors that supply canned content emphasize the value of that content in their advertisements.
Consumers pay for that content as part of the base package or as add-ons.
Yet the vendors will not let consumers see what they'll be getting until after they've paid for the product. Not only does this prevent potential buyers from evaluating the usefulness of the canned content, it also prevents them from evaluating how well the different search engines handle that content and the effect on performance of searching those knowledge bases. Wittmann propagates that PCs that reap the benefits of network booting must be diskless. That statement would have been accurate when the 3Station made its debut, but now administrators know that hybrid solutions work best. Network booting offers a fault-tolerant means of deploying network management at boot time, regardless of the contents of the workstation's hard drive.