On Tuesday 11 January 2005 22:36, Brad Bourn wrote:

SuSE isn't alone. <rant>

it seems almost all first level support is to find something to suggest, and get you off the phone as fast a possible, as if it is a game to see how many times you can get a person to call/write/type/talk back and never actually go to any depth or listen to the customer. Maybe I'm biased in that I have a higher level of skill than the average customer, however, I would thing SuSE users on average have said skill.

</rant>

I feel that I too "have a higher level of skill than the average customer" and I would also think that Linux users in general have a high skill level. That's part of my frustration. I want Linux to succeed, but it cannot if companies like Suse/Novell cannot provide support that is any better than Microsoft.

anyway, I would suggest this forum and

GOOGLE is your friend.

this mailing list can be searched easily through google using syntax

site:lists.suse.com keyword1 keyword2

for your case, I would type

"site:lists.suse.com motherboardmodel" and see what hits.

from watching this list, top 2 issues,

BIOS dual layer dvd

I have always have go results with both google and this forum (for which I am grateful that Suse provides. We often forget about that). However, since I paid for the product (not the first time) I figured I would go to the vendor (i.e. the people that got my money).

hope this helps SuSE is worth it!

I agree there! regards, jimmo -- --------------------------------------- "Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation. Your character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what others think you are." -- John Wooden --------------------------------------- Be sure to visit the Linux Tutorial: http://www.linux-tutorial.info --------------------------------------- NOTE: All messages sent to me in response to my posts to newsgroups or forums are subject to reposting.

On Fri, 2005-01-14 at 16:08 -0500, James Knott wrote:

...

I feel that I too "have a higher level of skill than the average customer" and I would also think that Linux users in general have a high skill level. That's part of my frustration. I want Linux to succeed, but it cannot if companies like Suse/Novell cannot provide support that is any better than Microsoft.

1) MS charges far more than any Linux company for the retail version. 2) Try getting support from MS, if you didn't buy the retail version. If Windows came with an OEM copy, you're supposed to get support from the computer vendor.

Well, if someone's going to "go there," I'll point out (as of the last time I called) that Microsoft charges $100 per support call for "home" products, and $200 per call for "business" products. This is over and above the cost of having a legally-licensed product. (OP is correct: with an OEM license, you can't even make the call. Also, at my company's size, the license is almost free; my point is only that support isn't included in the purchase price.) Over the years, I've called 4 times. They've solved my problem 2 out of those 4 times. In all 4 cases, they were as "professional" as I would have expected. YMMV.

josephine@jaykay.org wrote:

...

On Fri, 2005-01-14 at 16:08 -0500, James Knott wrote:

"

...

products, and $200 per call for "business" products. This is over and

Lucky you. I get charged 390euros+vat by Microsoft for windows 2k server support per question, not hour.

Josephine

Must be their positive discrimination policy. Women get charged double. :-) Regards, -- Jos van Kan www.josvankan.tk

On Wed, 2005-01-12 at 00:09 +0100, Carlos E. R. wrote:

The Tuesday 2005-01-11 at 22:43 +0100, Josephine wrote:

...

SuSE prof. has a limited installation support. It a community version and not suitable for corporate use, where real suport is. If you want to get in touch with tech support, i sugest you use the phone, and not mail. Afterall, you have to imagine they receive thousand of emails every day and it might be quite stressing to sort out everything *and* remeber every user's problems.

Excuse me... but if I'm able to do it here, on list, and I'm not paid for it, so can they. The same goes for many co-listers here.

Wrong. Suse's tech support should take care of enterprise products, cause there's where the money comes from and this helps them issue another version of your Prof edition for free (as long as there is minimum free ftp install, yes, suse is still free; as long as updates are free, yes, suse prof is free). You have free time; assume other don't have time reading all mails (i usually read them with the Delete key and pay attention only to interesting threads). Apreciate the work of the co-listers here for they time and apreciate the work of suse's people for their work; without them supporting businss users you would have to pay for a suse license. josephine

The Tuesday 2005-01-11 at 16:47 -0700, Brad Bourn wrote:

I think he was responding to the

"Afterall, you have to imagine they receive thousand of emails every day and it might be quite stressing to sort out everything *and* remeber every user's problems."...

B-)

Exactly. That is what I was refering to. It is no big deal for me to keep track of the issues I'm answering to, and if I don't remember - and I often don't - I reread the thread. So, if I can for free (and the hundreds of people contributing to this list), they can for money; and it is their contractual obligation to do so, once it is stated on the box. -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

On Wed, Jan 12, 2005 at 01:58:43AM +0000, Sid Boyce wrote:

They can easily prioritise the problems and issue updates. It's obvious what the most pressing problems are. Feedback is good and proper support staff earn their crust sorting those out, the patches suggest they must be listening to their customers and also being proactive, except ...to the raft of 9.2 installation strangeness

Not all SuSE installation strangeness is resolveable by SuSE support, though. For instance, I was unable to get a working installation of SuSE 9.2 successfully configured on my IBM ThinkCentre A50p until I applied the Critical BIOS update downloadable from: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=TCTR-ERRN91 Despite being a system BIOS issue (proven by the fact that it was entirely resolved by installing the BIOS update concerned), it didn't affect SuSE 8.2 nor 9.1, both of which had previously installed and run on the same machine successfully. It would be unrealistic to expect SuSE to know that this BIOS update must be installed before 9.2 can be successfully installed on a number of IBM machines. It appears that this is in fact an Intel issue primarily: http://developer.intel.com/design/pentium4/specupdt/249199.htm http://developer.intel.com/design/celeron/specupdt/290749.htm http://developer.intel.com/design/pentium4/specupdt/302352.htm http://developer.intel.com/design/celeron/specupdt/302354.htm So this could be perhaps the underlying cause of some installation issues that SuSE 9.2 users are experiencing, related to BIOS updates being needed for machines running certain Intel processors, rather than anything that SuSE support can fix. -- Anthony Edwards anthony.edwards@uk.easynet.net

The Tuesday 2005-01-11 at 19:22 -0500, Bruce Marshall wrote:

On Tuesday 11 January 2005 06:39 pm, Josephine wrote:

...

On Wed, 2005-01-12 at 00:09 +0100, Carlos E. R. wrote:

...

Excuse me... but if I'm able to do it here, on list, and I'm not paid for it, so can they. The same goes for many co-listers here.

Wrong. Suse's tech support should take care of enterprise products, cause there's where the money comes from and this helps them issue another version of your Prof edition for free (as long as there is minimum free ftp install, yes, suse is still free; as long as updates are free, yes, suse prof is free).

Excuse me but *only* people who pay for SuSE Pro are offered the help.

Correct also.

So you're saying that if SuSE *says* it is going to give you 90 days of install support when you purchase 9.2 Pro, that they then don't have to provide it???

It is part of the "contract". If the box costs money for the purchaser, and it says that support is included for so much time, and with such conditions, that is contractually binding. -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

On Wednesday 12 January 2005 09:53, Kevin Donnelly wrote:

On Wednesday 12 Jan 2005 00:22, Bruce Marshall wrote:

...

So you're saying that if SuSE *says* it is going to give you 90 days of install support when you purchase 9.2 Pro, that they then don't have to provide it???

I think Josephine's point is that it's more difficult to give full support on everything to private users, because they are likely to have more heterogeneous systems than company users. Certainly, SUSE gives support to those who purchase the boxes, but only on certain areas - for that reason. Company users are likely to have older, company-wide PCs with fewer hardware add-ons, and the company will have entered into a longer-term support relationship. Moreover, in many cases, the queries may be mediated through the company's IT person, who may already have dealt with the more obvious issues. So it's probably easier to get a handle on what the problem may be than with a query from a private user, some of whose problems may actually be due to the fact that he is completely new to Linux.

However, the issue is that the free support is only for installation issue on a single machine. You don't get support to help you connect Samba to Win98, NT and XP, for example. You don't get help figuring out why the system works fine for three months and then freezes. That's what paid support does and yes, you are right that the company's IT person probably mediates and get through the basics before calling support. However, I am talking about a case where I cannot even get the software installed. Note software for which I paid money. Suse 9.0 works. Suse 9.2 doesn't. Formatting as an ext2fs works, an ext3fs doesn't (nor does reiser). Something support has not addressed.

Where do you start? As some of the queries on this list show, it can sometimes take some intricate work to tease out a specific issue. It's just not practical to do more than the basics for that user - I suppose about £10 of the box price goes to support, and that would pay for, what - 15 minutes? I tend not to waste time (theirs or mine) with Support - you're more likely to get a sensible answer from one of these lists, or googling. The things that can't be solved that way, I put up with until the next release, which at least (unlike proprietary software) is fairly frequent. And if I really couldn't stand SUSE any more, I could use another Linux distro (which again isn't really possible with proprietary software).

What I read there is that support should stop working after about 15 minutes (more or less). If Suse support considers it a waste of their time, then they shouldn't offer it. Drop the price of the software accordingly and then expect people to pay for support. If I don't like it,I can go elsewhere, "which again isn't really possible with proprietary software". They took my money (indirectly) and are contractually obligated to provide "professional" support. In my opinion that has not been done to the fullest extent it *should* be. If Suse decides not to provide this service in the future, more than likely I won't switch even if RedHat were to continue offering it. However, from the end-users perspective, how does Linux differ from Windows? I cannot get it installed and the support the vendor gives me does not address the problem (let alone solve it). Yes, it was/is probably more sensible to google or the list. Why then is this service offered? Personally, I think it is bad for their reputation to ask money for a service and then say you need to go somewhere else for that service. regards, jimmo -- --------------------------------------- "Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation. Your character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what others think you are." -- John Wooden --------------------------------------- Be sure to visit the Linux Tutorial: http://www.linux-tutorial.info --------------------------------------- NOTE: All messages sent to me in response to my posts to newsgroups or forums are subject to reposting.

The Wednesday 2005-01-12 at 10:50 -0000, Kevin Donnelly wrote:

...

However, I am talking about a case where I cannot even get the software installed. Note software for which I paid money. Suse 9.0 works. Suse 9.2 doesn't. Formatting as an ext2fs works, an ext3fs doesn't (nor does reiser). Something support has not addressed.

Yes, but what you're asking for in effect is a guarantee that you can install SUSE without problems on any machine of your choosing. The free support can't do that - they can provide best efforts to try and answer your questions, but even then there may just be something about your machine that they've never come across, and couldn't sort out without a large expenditure of effort. The word is "support" (ie help) - there's no guarantees about it.

No, what he asked for is that the support personnel read his emails fully, and the track report, before answering to a minor issue instead of the big problem he was asking about. Check his first email: |> I opened up a support request and each time I reply to what SuSE |> support tells me to do, it is as if they did not read the whole |> message, let alone the rest of the problem history. So, they end up |> picking out one minor issue (such as one of 10 messages) and make some |> comment or suggestion about that. In essence, despite having paid for |> the software, I am no where near getting it installed. Had anyone else |> had the same bad experience with SuSE support? That is what he complained about, and Hartmut (A SuSE employee, or related to them, I understand) promptly asked him for the ticket number in order to look it up. And that is very nice of him, but I'm not sure if James noticed that email :-) -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

On Wednesday 12 January 2005 11:50, Kevin Donnelly wrote:

On Wednesday 12 Jan 2005 08:15, James Mohr wrote:

...

However, I am talking about a case where I cannot even get the software installed. Note software for which I paid money. Suse 9.0 works. Suse 9.2 doesn't. Formatting as an ext2fs works, an ext3fs doesn't (nor does reiser). Something support has not addressed.

Yes, but what you're asking for in effect is a guarantee that you can install SUSE without problems on any machine of your choosing.

<sarcasm> Maybe you should get a different mailer. Your's seems to be mixing message from one person to another. </sarcasm> I never said anything of the sort. I expect (demand?) that support reads the case history and provide suggestions based on the case history and not on two words that happen to appear in the fifth email. When I tell them the only way to even boot the install CD and start the installation is to use "Installation - Safe Settings" and they tell me "why don't you try 'Installation - Safe Settings'", I get annoyed. They are not reading the case history. This is what a professional support organization does. If after reading the case history, which was obviously not done, they say "sorry we cannot support every HW combination", then I have to accept it (and I will).

The free support can't do that - they can provide best efforts to try and answer your questions, but even then there may just be something about your machine that they've never come across, and couldn't sort out without a large expenditure of effort. The word is "support" (ie help) - there's no guarantees about it.

You mean along the lines of "please try the things you told us you are already doing." That's "best effort", right?

You can always do that, as I said. I doubt if SUSE considers it a waste of their time to try and keep paying customers happy, but in the real world, resource decisions have to be made. Suppose, for instance, sorting out an obscure problem for one person took so much time that the simpler queries of 5 other people get ignored? What's best there?

However, it is unprofessional to keep me hanging on for weeks wasting my "resources" if they have already made the decision that 5 other people should get professional support, but I shouldn't. They can tell me, they have no solution and it seems to HW related (which is probably is). I don't have a problem with that.

From what you said above, you *can* get it installed with ext2, but not with a journalling filesystem. Maybe there's something about your setup (hard disk controller?) that doesn't like such filesystems insofar as they are implemented in 9.2 (even if 9.0 was OK). Or maybe some kernel or other parameter change has caused this. Either way, it is not necessarily simple to track down. If Support haven't come across it before, there may actually be no answer as yet. That doesn't mean that the concept of support is itself invalid.

OK, were are dealing with email number 7 here (several weeks) and this kind of thing has been going on since the beginning. It wasn't until recently that I decided to try something else out of sheer frustration. Trying it with ext2 was not support's idea. In the problem description I said the only way to even start the installed was booting with "Safe Settings". In those 7 emails so far: - No. 2 told me to run a program which was not available from the installation CD and they said I could "login" after that. I asked if they were working on the same problem, because I was not having trouble logging in. - No. 3 asked me if running the non-existant program made a difference. I asked how could it, when the program does not exist? They were "confused" as to where I was in the installation. (didn't read the history, huh?) - No. 4 finally had a useful suggestion (although it did not help unfortunately). - No 6 Told me to use "ide=nodma" which is part of the "Safe Settings". Haven't read the history, yet, it seems. I say "I reboot and try to have the system format the drive this time with ext2. At first it seems to hang, but eventually it starts installing the system and I complete the first CD. Yippee! However, I do not want ext2, I want either ext3 or reiser, so I reboot to do the installation again. This time I try to format it from YAST with ext3. It hangs again. " They respond "This is not supported and attempted at your own risk, however you can convert from ext2 to ext3." What is not supported? Formating with ext3? The reponse "Sorry, my wording was perhaps not perfect." Granted, No. 7 has some useful suggestions, which I have not tried yet.

As regards "how does Linux differ from Windows?", I think that even if installation and support were zero in both OSs, the question is easily answered in Linux' favour.

Not necessarily, if you are just talking about free install support, which is what this is all about.

The key point is that in a community effort in a field where new technology is being introduced every 6 months, there will be glitches, and frustrating ones. They will get fixed, but not necessarily on a timescale that suits our immediate needs.

I never said anything different. However, even if I go someplace like McDonald's, the food should not be cold. I am not paying for a seven course menu, but there are certain thing you can expect. For support, one of which is to read the case history, which they weren't doing. Thus, they were wasting everyone's time. Regards, jimmo -- --------------------------------------- "Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation. Your character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what others think you are." -- John Wooden --------------------------------------- Be sure to visit the Linux Tutorial: http://www.linux-tutorial.info --------------------------------------- NOTE: All messages sent to me in response to my posts to newsgroups or forums are subject to reposting.

On Wednesday 12 January 2005 09:23, Hartmut Meyer wrote:

Correction: we have two seperate support departments: one dealing with business support and another one dealing with consumer support.

Questions regarding the consumer product (SUSE Linux Professional) which are covered by the scope of the "free" service

http://www.novell.com/products/linuxprofessional/support/conditions.html

and where the customer has a valid support claim should be answered in a professional manner (and typically are) by our consumer support team. This is not saying that we would be able to solve all issues.

Servus Harmut! The expression "professional manner" is an extremely vague and stretchable concept. Is a polite person who does not have a clue about the product still "professional"? Is someone who is not as polite as they could be, but knows the product in and out "professional"? Support has always been polite. In that regard, they have been professional. They have addressed technical issues regarding the information they have been provided. In that regard, they have been professional. It seem obvious to me that they are not reading the case history. In *my* opinion that is *not* professional. Don't get me wrong. I am a strong supporter of Suse. I even advertise Suse on my site for free. However, it is extremely frustrating because 1) I am no closer to getting my problem solved 2) I know Suse can do better. regards, jimmo -- --------------------------------------- "Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation. Your character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what others think you are." -- John Wooden --------------------------------------- Be sure to visit the Linux Tutorial: http://www.linux-tutorial.info --------------------------------------- NOTE: All messages sent to me in response to my posts to newsgroups or forums are subject to reposting.

On Wednesday 12 January 2005 09:23, Hartmut Meyer wrote:

...

Questions regarding the consumer product (SUSE Linux Professional) which are covered by the scope of the "free" service

There's the 'rub,' but at least Novell has the decency to note on the box that the free support is limited to www.novell.com/usersupport. I was disappointed to see that the free support didn't cover my Lucent winmodem (for which there is a driver in SuSE professional), but I ended up getting support in a passing conversation with a fellow geek. I recently switched to SuSE from Red Hat, having been a Red Hat user since I put version 7.1 on a router a few years back. But since switching I've found that with each new kernel patch the ltmodem driver seems to be getting more, not less, difficult to implement. The latest ltmodem driver (the one which came with the boxed 9.2-Professional) had a lot of documentation, but little seemed to apply. All I ended up having to do is create a file called modem in /etc/modprobe.d/ with the following information: alias char-major-62 ltserial alias /dev/tts/LT0 ltserial alias /dev/modem ltserial NOTE: This is slightly different that the 1ST-READ file which says to use lt_serial as opposed to ltserial. The 1ST-READ says to put it in /etc/modules.conf which doesn't seem to do anything with the 2.6 kernel - docs need to be adjusted for this package to reflect the change with the new kernel. Hope this helps someone else. Cheers, Charles p.s. I guessed that the file should be called modem, it just made sense to me since there was a file called tv and a file called sound already in the directory. I knew about ltserial vs lt_serial from trying modprobe ltserial instead of modprobe lt_serial (which didn't work). -- Charles McColm, charm@porchlight.ca http://tuxspot.blogspot.com/

Þann Miðvikudagur 12 janúar 2005 00:09 skrifaði Carlos E. R.:

Excuse me... but if I'm able to do it here, on list, and I'm not paid for it, so can they. The same goes for many co-listers here.

Most of us "pick" certain issues, and we're never "overloaded" with requests for that reason. The moment an issue becomes too "demanding" or too "stressing" most of us "shrug" it off, like Atlas did :-) it's the real advantage of "open source" ;-) I suggest you post your "entire" install problem here, and ask ... there are a lot of quality people on this list.

-- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

My 2¢ worth, Örn

I LOVE the stickers... They've been getting chintzy on the stickers... Grrrr hehehehehe They need a "sign up for free stickers" on their website! What a great way to advertise cheaply (do you hear this Novell?) B-) On Tuesday 11 January 2005 05:46 pm, Allen wrote:

On Tue, Jan 11, 2005 at 10:43:33PM +0100, Josephine wrote:

...

On Tue, 2005-01-11 at 20:28 +0100, James Mohr wrote:

...

Hi all!

<rant> Is it just me or has SuSE support gone down the toilet. I paid real money for 9.2 and have spent the last several weeks trying to get it installed, but it keeps hanging at the point just before it should be installing the software. Although I have bought every even numbered versions since 8.0, this is the first time I have had to open a support call.

I opened up a support request and each time I reply to what SuSE support tells me to do, it is as if they did not read the whole message, let alone the rest of the problem history. So, they end up picking out one minor issue (such as one of 10 messages) and make some comment or suggestion about that. In essence, despite having paid for the software, I am no where near getting it installed. Had anyone else had the same bad experience with SuSE support? </rant>

SuSE prof. has a limited installation support. It a community version and not suitable for corporate use, where real suport is. If you want to get in touch with tech support, i sugest you use the phone, and not mail. Afterall, you have to imagine they receive thousand of emails every day and it might be quite stressing to sort out everything *and* remeber every user's problems. And you did not pay 89eur/usd *just* for tech support; the printing of those 2 manuals costs.

Josephine

Don't forget the stickers! I have them everywhere.

...

-- Check the headers for your unsubscription address For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com Please read the FAQs: suse-linux-e-faq@suse.com

That's what I meant (quantity, not quality) Same here, I've been paying 79.99 for 4 stickers ever since 6.3. And they even throw in a couple of books and cd's to boot! But now you only get 1 sticker for 79.99..... hehehe B-) On Wednesday 12 January 2005 01:17 pm, Allen wrote:

On Wed, Jan 12, 2005 at 08:39:06AM -0700, Brad Bourn wrote:

...

I LOVE the stickers...

They've been getting chintzy on the stickers...

Grrrr

hehehehehe

They need a "sign up for free stickers" on their website! What a great way to advertise cheaply (do you hear this Novell?)

B-)

I don't think the stickers are cheap at all. 8.1, I got 4 stickers, which rocked! 8.2, I got 1 sticker and it was OK because it was a more high quality model, lol, and same with 9.1. :)

...

On Tuesday 11 January 2005 05:46 pm, Allen wrote:

...

On Tue, Jan 11, 2005 at 10:43:33PM +0100, Josephine wrote:

...

On Tue, 2005-01-11 at 20:28 +0100, James Mohr wrote:

...

Hi all!

<rant> Is it just me or has SuSE support gone down the toilet. I paid real money for 9.2 and have spent the last several weeks trying to get it installed, but it keeps hanging at the point just before it should be installing the software. Although I have bought every even numbered versions since 8.0, this is the first time I have had to open a support call.

I opened up a support request and each time I reply to what SuSE support tells me to do, it is as if they did not read the whole message, let alone the rest of the problem history. So, they end up picking out one minor issue (such as one of 10 messages) and make some comment or suggestion about that. In essence, despite having paid for the software, I am no where near getting it installed. Had anyone else had the same bad experience with SuSE support? </rant>

SuSE prof. has a limited installation support. It a community version and not suitable for corporate use, where real suport is. If you want to get in touch with tech support, i sugest you use the phone, and not mail. Afterall, you have to imagine they receive thousand of emails every day and it might be quite stressing to sort out everything *and* remeber every user's problems. And you did not pay 89eur/usd *just* for tech support; the printing of those 2 manuals costs.

Josephine

Don't forget the stickers! I have them everywhere.

...

-- Check the headers for your unsubscription address For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com Please read the FAQs: suse-linux-e-faq@suse.com

-- Check the headers for your unsubscription address For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com Please read the FAQs: suse-linux-e-faq@suse.com

Allen wrote:

On Wed, Jan 12, 2005 at 08:39:06AM -0700, Brad Bourn wrote:

...

I LOVE the stickers...

They've been getting chintzy on the stickers...

Grrrr

hehehehehe

They need a "sign up for free stickers" on their website! What a great way to advertise cheaply (do you hear this Novell?)

B-)

I don't think the stickers are cheap at all. 8.1, I got 4 stickers, which rocked! 8.2, I got 1 sticker and it was OK because it was a more high quality model, lol, and same with 9.1. :)

Maybe the free installation support only applies to the stickers. ;-)

Ben, On Friday 14 January 2005 01:25, Ben Higginbottom wrote:

On 14/01/05 01:55 AM, James Knott wrote:

...

...

Maybe the free installation support only applies to the stickers. ;-)

In which case I'm off to lodge a support request, my 9.2 sticker has faded away over the last couple of months, while my stickers from 8 til present are still in pristine condition.

They probably switched to organic, non-toxic, soy-based inks whereas the older stickers used those nasty, toxic, heavy metal-based inks. You should be glad they're environmentally sensitive enough to make this change.

*tsk* Novell may know alot about networking and computers, but when it comes to quality stickers their a joke :-)

Yes, they're. RRS

On Tuesday 11 January 2005 10:43, Josephine wrote:

SuSE prof. has a limited installation support. It a community version and not suitable for corporate use, where real suport is. If you want to get in touch with tech support, i sugest you use the phone, and not mail.

Well that is easier said then done. I don't know where you live but when I want to do that it costs me $4.20 a minute. Anyway the suggestion from SUSE is to do it through email ( see support)

Afterall, you have to imagine they receive thousand of emails every day and it might be quite stressing to sort out everything *and* remeber every user's problems.

Sorry to say but you are absolutely wrong Support is offered and there for should be given, regardless how many requests come in. That is SuSE's problem not the one who send the email. And if they can't handle that it should be withdrawn. -- Greetings from /bill at 169 west , 19 south. Disclaimer: Any errors in spelling, tact, or fact are transmission errors."

The Wednesday 2005-01-12 at 09:30 +0100, Hartmut Meyer wrote:

Right.

There is no problem with dealing with many e-mail based support requests. That's what we have a ticket system for.

And like you pointed out: more often than not (i really depends on the issue at hand) we prefer being contacted by e-mail rather than by phone. Peaks in e-mail volume are easier to handle than peaks in phone volume. Also: whenever we need to have a look at some log files, phone isn't the best way of communication anyway.

Also, considering that for many SuSE customers English is not the first language, writing an email (perhaps in broken English!) is far easier than keeping a conversation over the phone in English. I know that from personal experience, at both ends of the phone line ;-) (other business) -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson

On Wednesday 12 January 2005 01:26, Allen wrote: <SNIP>

Try wording it better. Don't make the email long, make it a description of the probelsm exactly. Not a long life story, they get paid to help you with software, not your emotional troubles.

Hi Allen! The only time I ranted was this last time as I am getting frustrated at the tangents they are going off on. The last time was so far away from the problem, that it appeared as if they did not bother to read the case history. The first email was short-n-sweat, but I have been asked to provide information to support about the problem. Also if you make the email too short you often do not include vital details. I did UNIX tech support for four years, so I know what it's like, but even 10 years ago, we had software that kept track of the case history *and* we were expected to read it even for the free installation support. Regards, jimmo -- --------------------------------------- "Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation. Your character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what others think you are." -- John Wooden --------------------------------------- Be sure to visit the Linux Tutorial: http://www.linux-tutorial.info --------------------------------------- NOTE: All messages sent to me in response to my posts to newsgroups or forums are subject to reposting.