Ubuntu commercial support is the same as Vista Ultimate?!?!

[mattboston at gmail.com (Matt Shields)]

So by your reasoning, Linux support companies should lower their
standards and pricing structures to that of Windows support companies
even though Windows is "so easy a caveman could do it" and you want to
try to find cavemen to staff the Linux support companies.  It's not
that Linux is more difficult, it's that Microsoft has designed a
inflexible product for idiots.  Microsoft has put computers in the
hands of hundreds of millions of stupid people that know how to point
and click and can't figure out a problem for themselves when clicking
doesn't work.  You wouldn't believe the moronic people that I deal
with on a day to day that have problems creating simple Excel
spreadsheets.  And the unfortunate side effect of this, is that more
and more of these  idiots are becoming so called Windows sysadmins.
Most people are lazy and stupid, they want people to do all the work
for them, they don't want to search the internet for the answer or
read a man page.  And I guarantee that some people on this list fall
into this category, sorry if this offends some but it's true.

And if I sound angry at these people it's because they are lazy, you
wouldn't believe the amount of windows sysadmins that ask me, a linux
sysadmin, how to fix a windows problem and expect me to do it for them
instead of asking me for advice and them learning.  No wonder they're
stupid.

Robert was right, you as a customer are free to find support for any
of your systems from anyone.  You are not being forced to go to
Microsoft or Ubuntu for support.   You can find a contractor or call a
company or you can hire someone.   My point was the people that take
advantage of Windows support are likely the same people that might
take advantage of Ubuntu support.  They are the small/medium size
business who wants to use Linux, they may or may not have a sysadmin
and they "may" need to call someone from time to time.

The company I work for is a RedHat shop.  We're all competent
sysadmins, but there have been a few cases, such as dealing with
unique hardware, where we have called Redhat and having the option to
call them directly was more beneficial than calling in a consultant.
And having that option is a huge selling point when presenting the
choice to upper management of which distro we are going to use.  If we
used Ubuntu or Novell on our servers, we would have called them.  I
personally think Ubuntu offering this is a great move considering how
popular Ubuntu has become.

Matt

On 2/7/07, Grant M. <gmongardi at napc.com> wrote:
> Robert L Krawitz wrote:
> > You're free to find someone else who will give you support for less.
> > Technical support is expensive because the marginal cost is high --
> > labor isn't cheap.
> >
> > Considering what's in Vista (Ultimate or otherwise), you're still
> > getting a bargain buying Ubuntu *plus* support.
>
> [this is in response to all of the emails, not just this one]
> I do understand the cost of support - I do it for a living, and
> generally only on 'nix systems, RHEL included. But I also understand
> that people with Windows Desktop systems have a much lower expectation
> of what support is, as well as how much it should cost. It actually
> comes up with the sales guys here fairly often as to how we can offer
> some sort of reduced-price support.
>
> Think about this:
> Windows charges $XXX for their product, which is actually for the cost
> of creating and packaging the product, as well as for something in the
> way of support ( 90-day from purchase, however good this support might
> be). By not offering something similar, doesn't Ubuntu send the message
> that:
>     1.> It is harder to support Ubuntu, which in turn sends a message
>         that perhaps "Ubuntu will be harder to use"
>     2.> We get the software for free, but we want to make a bunch of
>         money without actually charging for the software
>     3.> We can't really compete at the same level with Microsoft.
>
> I don't honestly believe any of those myself, but I am playing devil's
> advocate, and I do however believe the point is valid.
>
> For those of you who are going to make the point that Ubuntu's support
> is somehow better than Microsoft's, I'm curious how you know that, and
> how you've made that comparison.
>
> Thanks,
> Grant M.
> --
> Grant Mongardi
> Senior Systems Engineer
> NAPC
>
> gmongardi at napc.com
> http://www.napc.com/
> 781.894.3114 phone
> 781.894.3997 fax
>
> NAPC | technology matters
>
>
>
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