From owner-freebsd-hackers Sun Apr 20 10:20:00 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA01916 for hackers-outgoing; Sun, 20 Apr 1997 10:20:00 -0700 (PDT) Received: from etinc.com (et-gw-fr1.etinc.com [204.141.244.98]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA01911 for ; Sun, 20 Apr 1997 10:19:54 -0700 (PDT) Received: from dbws.etinc.com (dbws.etinc.com [204.141.95.130]) by etinc.com (8.8.3/8.6.9) with SMTP id NAA22068; Sun, 20 Apr 1997 13:25:22 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <3.0.32.19970420131810.006a1164@etinc.com> X-Sender: dennis@etinc.com X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0 (32) Date: Sun, 20 Apr 1997 13:18:13 -0400 To: The Hermit Hacker From: dennis Subject: Re: Price of FreeBSD (was On Holy Wars...) Cc: "Kevin P. Neal" , Stephen Roome , freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk At 01:48 PM 4/20/97 -0300, The Hermit Hacker wrote: >On Sun, 20 Apr 1997, dennis wrote: > >> yeah, but LL Bean doesnt have to field tech support calls for >> its customers, now do they? >> >> Selling one low-end card to someone overseas whos going to constantly >> need tech support is a losing proposition. Sometimes, and I know that most >> of you folks won't get this, its a business decision to send someone on their >> way. > > Ran an ISP way back when, with >5000 clients that paid alot less then >your 'low-end card', and we never 'sent someone on their way'...and I'd imagine, >in alot of cases, your one client needing constant tech support knew more >about what he was doing then about 95% of our 5000 clients *shrug* Perhaps your tech support people dont make $200. per hour? The difference is that an ISP takes on VOLUME in order to make profits, much like insurance companies assume a certain pct of people that wont ever call. The more customer we take on, the more diluted the support for our existing customers. When you call us you still get me most of the time....and although you may not like me, you'd be hard pressed to find someone who said I couldnt help him. If you want some $20./hr tech support guy to handle your problems I can give you a real good deal on a card. But you cant get someone for that price that knows how frame relay works or can debug a ppp negotiation problem. I'm amazed at the number of ISPs that dont even know how to do simple things...I had to set up my brothers Win'95 dial-in (took about 5 min) because his ISP gave him all of the wrong info and had no clue how to do it ('95 was fairly new, but not THAT new, at the time)...you get what you pay for, most of the time. db > >Marc G. Fournier >Systems Administrator @ hub.org >primary: scrappy@hub.org secondary: scrappy@{freebsd|postgresql}.org > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------- Emerging Technologies, Inc. http://www.etinc.com 56k, T1, Frac-T3 Adapters for 'BSD and LINUX. ET/BWMGR Bandwidth Allocation and Firewall Tool Bandwidth Allocation/Limiting Routers