Thought you might get a kick out of this... -----Original Message----- From: Stuart Powell [mailto:SPOWELL@barr.com] Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2001 3:16 PM To: Roger_hartje@hotmail.com Subject: Your Rather Peculiar SuSE 7.1 Review Good afternoon, Mr. Hartje. My attention was drawn earlier to your review of SuSE 7.1 Professional dated yesterday, March 26th 2001, and found here... http://www.zdnet.com/products/stories/reviews/0,4161,2700122,00.html I am curious to know if a huge, monopolistic software development company that we all know particularly well funded this review. I shall jump straight to the mathematical issue, if you will indulge me. You state that at $69.95, SuSE 7.1 is less expensive than the Microsoft offerings. I agree. Then you lose me. You say yourself that the cost per user of W2K and Office2K is about $800. That's per user, yes ? Your SuSE 7.1 media cost you about $70, and is valid for your entire enterprise. So, in an office of, for example, 100 users, my fees for using SuSE on every machine these users have is about $70. Those same people would cost me about $80,000 in MS Tax alone, before I even hire people to set the machines up for my users. That $80,000 buys a lot of someone's time to install the software. You make no mention of the outrageous pricing for the W2K server offerings. Again, every one of my servers is covered by my $70. And with companies like Compaq, HP and IBM standing up for Linux, you know it is going to work on their hardware, and it does. I also have remote installation options for my SuSE setups, such as CD-ROM, FTP (from CD, local server or Internet) and a couple of others I forget right now. These are akin to my options with W2K, i.e. CD-ROM and RIS (Remote Installation Services). So deployment time and effort are about even. Documentation ? Are you not impressed with the wealth of documentation both in the box and on your installed SuSE system ? MAN pages, HTML pages, online help, the SuSE Support Database, and 6 wonderful manuals. Have you seen the documentation that comes with MS Windows these days ? It is scant, to put it kindly. And you complain that the manual explains nothing of the server side of SuSE. Well, with about 1600 applications on the CDs, and a 1000 page manual to go at, I think you would be hard pressed to introduce most of the apps and services, let alone give a full explanation of them. Stop killing trees, and start the using the online docs; it's what they're there for. I am sorry to hear that you had such trouble configuring SuSE to recognise your video card. Maybe you should drop them a quick message at feedback@suse.com, and let them know what model video card you have and what error messages you received. You could also make use of the 90 day installation support that your $70 bought you. And before you start thinking to yourself, "Here we go, another Linux zealot", I would like you to know that I am both an MCSE and CNE, and I work in an environment consisting of Novell, Solaris, SunOS, Linux, NT4 and W2K. My ire comes from your writing a very biased and unfair article, which seems to lack the air of professionalism apparent in serious articles on these matters. Stuart Powell.