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Re[4]: The Compaq Issue
Ariel Biener <ariel@fireball.tau.ac.il> wrote:
> On Sun, 28 Feb 1999, Evgeny Stambulchik wrote:
>
> > Hmm, maybe they (Dell) improved lately. When I checked the issue two or
> > three years ago, I did quite a thourough check of news posts, and
> _major_
> > part of them were saying "Don't buy Dell!" I can quote by heart one PC
> > repairment technician: "Thanks a lot to Dell. If they didn't exist, my
> > income would have halved."
First, I beg everyone's pardon: I don't know what happened yesterday -
probably I slept bad, but somehow I mixed up "Dell" and "Packard-Bell". So
what I wrote regarding Dell was actually related to Packard-Bell.
> I don't mean to start a flame war. My mail was sent based on experience
> with a brand of high quality servers. Ranting on news lists or this and
> that repair technician anecdotes do not really compare with hard facts,
> based on experience working with these machines.
Well, I personally consider news groups as a superb source of information.
You say XXX is perfect, I say it isn't. This means nothing. But when 80
different people out of 100 say XXX is ****, I'm inclined to believe them. I
believe in the laws of statistics. After all, aren't their sayings just a
result "based on experience working with these machines", quoting your
words? Or do you believe "hard facts" mentioned on the BRAND's home page?
> Your point here may very well work for individuals or very small
> organizations, that have the time to do the QA themselves,
And yours may be acceptable by very large institutions, funded by goverment,
which don't mind to shell out many $k's instead of carefull thinking? :-)
> and don't have
> mission critical tasks at hand. Large enterprises cannot deal with things
> in this manner. The price you pay for BRAND name is because their
> technical teams do the QA and integration for you, so you don't have to
> do
> trial and error sequences yourself. No large enterprise can. What these
> entities want is things that are guaranteed to work, and good support.
Seriously, of course, this a perfectly valid point of view. The point is
that the BRAND name you mentioned (and practically any other of similar
size) have no knowledge of Linux. The situation is changing slowly lately,
but it's far from the point I'd believe their QA & support in regards to
_Linux_. Their hardware may work rock solid under Win* (well, if the term is
appliable to that OS at all), but this tells nothing whether Linux will work
fine on the same hardware.
> I can say, from my experience, that I never had any problem with any of
> these DELLs,
This is nothing but a luck - same chances for a no-name box with randomly
choosen (but quality!) parts. I don't talk about "Pentium III for NIS 3,000"
boxes, of course.
> and when I needed a memory upgrade, they were VERY
> responsive. Their sales manager has also visited us, to keep a good
> relationship between TAU and DELL Israel.
Of course. If Linux didn't run on a box your ordered from them, they'd
replaced it immediately. But this is NOT because they understand what's
Linux or what the real problem was - but because you're a representative of
a very large corporate client, that's all.
> To conclude, large enterprises are looking to delegate some of the work
> to
> 3rd parties, in order for them to be efficient. This is why BRAND names
> thrive in that department.
There are many reasons why BRAND names earn their money successfully. There
are many books written on this subject. A huge business success of MS
doesn't mean their OS or applications are excellent.
Finally, IMHO, a call to buy hardware from BRAND names is irrelevant to a
forum like this one (of general interest to Linux users, most of them NOT
representatives of large enterprises) and against the spirit of Linux as
such. If your budget is not restricted, why do you use Linux at all? For a
given hardware running Linux you can always buy a more expensive box running
a more expensive OS with good QA and support behind both that would
outperform the Linux box in every aspect? After all, if Linus originally had
enough money to buy any hardware and OS for it he wanted - I bet Linux would
never emerged... or remained as a toy with version number 0.1 or so.
Regards,
Evgeny
--
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/ Evgeny Stambulchik <fnevgeny@plasma-gate.weizmann.ac.il> \
/ Plasma Laboratory, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel \ \
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