Posts by George Siegel

I'll wait...

"So, commentards, would you drive an iCar?®"

I'll wait until I see what Samsung is offering.

Paul's right, or maybe it's left?

While I've never been able to do the mirror reversal writing, I did accidentally discover many years ago that I can write upside-down without any special effort.

It comes in handy when I have drawings or diagrams on my desk, facing the people sitting across from me, and then begin writing notes that are readable from their side.

No one is much surprised by it though. As a network administrator, I guess it's assumed that I'm in league with the Devil.

I enjoy M$ Bashing...

I enjoy bashing Microsoft as much as the next guy, and they usually deserve it, but didn't ANYONE notice the sentence that read "...charities pay an admin charge... and save over 95%...)?

My consulting practice handles the networks for several charities here in the U.S. For years now, we're regularly purchased MS software at 95% off, at places like techsoup.com and most major suppliers. Although primarily for so-called 501c3 non-profits, there are other special programs that focus on libraries, medical practices, etc.

I'm willing to concede that free (as in beer) is better than 95% off. But realistically, any charity that can't cough up about $8.00 for a $400 product usually isn't a viable business entity to begin with, and probably won't be able to support for the donated computer for very long.

Sales as well as Support

I've found Dell support to be lacking for a long time. But lately I find that even the Sales group is screwed up.

One of my clients tried to buy a couple workstations recently; the same model that they had purchased about six months ago and with which they were very pleased. Although the model is still shown on the website, the salesperson first said that they hadn't sold that model in months, then tried to convince me that I had been reading the "refurbished units" part of their website, and finally admitted that the model is still available but only to large enterprises, not SOHO customers such as my client. WTF?

The same client tried to buy direct replacements for some propriatary components in their 4-yr old high-end Dell server and learned that some of them were no longer available. I can accept second rate desktop support but servers are "sacred" and I don't think that 4 years is an unreasonable period for them to stock replacement parts, especially when there are no alternatives.

I could go on but I won't. And we didn't. I've advised my clients to look elsewhere in the future.