On Mon, 6 Apr 1998, David Fisher wrote:
> > Have you looked at QNX? I have not used it, but I've heard good things
> > about it.
>
> replied. So, we lost interest. It's annoying to have to chase after a vendor and
> repeatedly ask him to sell to us. There was a good editorial to this effect in
>InfoWorld
Story: When USL decided they wanted a Multics system back in the early
1970's, they called Honeywell's New Orleans office. "Multics? Never heard
of it!" Then they called Honeywell's main office. "Multics? You don't want
one of those. Here's this nice GCOS system." "No, we want a Multics."
"Err, no, you don't want a Multics." "Yes we do."
They had to beg Honeywell to sell them one.
So we're not talking about anything new in the computer industry. I don't
know what these vendors are thinking about, but I do know the results
(hint: Honeywell is no longer in the computer business). Thus my personal
preferance -- never chase a vendor. One reason we went with Red Hat
instead of Caldera is because I called Caldera and said "We need twelve
units at reseller pricing." They said "Huh? Duh, what's that? We don't
have a reseller program set up yet, here, let me fax you twenty sheets of
stuff to join our Independent Solutions Provider program, it only costs
$500 to join." Then I called Red Hat and said "We need twelve units at
reseller pricing." Two days later they arrived by Federal Express.
I understand that Caldera has since cleaned up their act. But the point...
well, the point is that at least SOME of us just don't have the time or
the patience to go chasing down vendors who don't want to sell to us. I
can't count the number of database vendors I've tried to get in touch
with, for example, who never reply, who never call back, who never even
send me a bloody brochure for cryin' out loud. It's to the point where I
prefer dealing with those guys doing MySQL to dealing with most of these
"professionals", even though MySQL doesn't fully fit our needs (in
particular, data mirroring and replication is still a bit iffy, and lack
of cursor support makes some things less than optimal, and there's no
transaction support, and ... sigh). BTW, this moanfest doesn't include the
Empress folks. Good people. Anywho...
Eric Lee Green [EMAIL PROTECTED] Executive Consultants
Systems Specialist Educational Administration Solutions
"We believe Windows 95 is a walking antitrust violation" -- Bryan Sparks
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