bob@psitech.com (Bob Posert) (03/07/91)
I've been reading in various messages about Dell's wonderful support and would like to present an alternate view. My company ordered a Dell 333D machine with SVR4 last year, and after many delays like "we'll be shipping it out to you next week," finally got it in early February. The machine didn't work in various ways, so I called up Dell technical support for assistance. I got through to a helpful person, and he solved the immediate problems (tcp/ip wouldn't work [the "pre-installed" system wasn't configured for *any* network adapter], the mouse didn't work with X [the same "pre-installed" system was set up for a mouse different than the one that came with the machine]). The next day tcp/ip stopped working again. I asked for someone in UNIX support, and left a message. I got a call back after I left a few more messages over a few days, and had the following conversation: "I'm having problems communicating over the ethernet with the Western Digital card." "What kind of problems?" "I can't ping other machines on the network, but I can ping localhost." "You're getting pinging from your hard drive?" (What, is he serious?) "No, I run the UNIX command 'ping' and it says that the other machines aren't replying." "Umm, I'll have UNIX support call you back." (Isn't that what I asked for?) "Ok." After a few more calls, Dell sent a different model Western Digital 16 bit card that solved the problem. Note that you have to boot under DOS to configure the card - they don't supply a UNIX configuration program. After another annoying sequence of placing service calls and getting responses like "Your call has been dequeued wrongly," "Oh, gosh, I'll bring this to the supervisor's attention and you'll get a call back right away," "Gee, I'm really sorry. I'll print out this report to ensure that you get immediate service," etc. I was able to ask about a bug in Dell's implementation of X - you cannot start up an xterm from within an xterm. A semi-amusing sidebar: While waiting interminably on hold, listening to recorded sales pitches, I heard "Be sure to ask about Dell's plug and play UNIX solution - the 333D." It gives a whole new meaning to "plug and play" - plug it in, and play with it a long time before it works! The xterm bug and "many others" are supposed to be fixed in an update coming out towards the end of March. It isn't going to be automatically mailed out; you have to call them for it. This person wouldn't take a bug report about an interaction between Dell SVR3 csh/NFS and Dell SVR4 NFS. Another call. After only three calls to "Tech Support," over a week, I spoke to Pat Pitre about the bug: Dell SVR3 csh dumps core if an NFS mounted directory is placed in its PATH, if the NFS server is running Dell SVR4 (or SunOS, and maybe others). Pat told me to mail the core dump to support@dell, and he would call back with a PTR number. I mailed it, and called him after three days (and left a message on his voicemail). A different service tech, Ken Bees, returned the call and said that they never received the core dump. Hmm. Usually I get a notice of bounced mail. I told him how to duplicate the problem, and he said he would call back within two days. He also said that Dell planned no more SVR3 bug releases unless the bug was "very important." I told him that this bug means that the 333D machine won't be able to act as a server for the other Dell machines here (they run SVR3), and that it was very important to me; in fact, we bought the machine to _be_ that server. The suggested workaround was to use the Bourne shell on the SVR3 machines. Right. Three days later I called him, and he said that 1) He couldn't find a SVR3 machine with NFS to duplicate the problem on. 2) It had been "noted as a problem," PTR #AUS 2434. 3) If Dell comes up with a "resolution," which can take up to two months, they might call me back. Well, swell. Dell has major problems with their support. It is pure luck if you reach the same service tech on a followup call as on the original call. This means re-explaining the problem every time. They do not follow up on service calls. I placed a call regarding removable SCSI in mid- December, and was told that the problem had been assigned a PTR number and I would be contacted by an engineer. I never heard back. It looks to me like Dell is a DOS company that sells UNIX. I'd prefer to buy from a company that sells mated software and hardware, and will recommend purchases of real workstations in the future. Suns are looking better all the time. As always, these opinions do not reflect my employer's opinions, but are mine alone (though I do try to get other people to hold them). --Bob -- When an eel bites your leg, and the pain makes you beg, that's a moray! I'm bob@psitech.com or uunet!psitech!bob
dhesi%cirrusl@oliveb.ATC.olivetti.com (Rahul Dhesi) (03/07/91)
I bought an AT from PC's Limited in 1986, which was the original name
of Michael Dell's company. Two years later, when it was known as Dell
and was sending me wonderful color flyers every month, I called to ask
if they had a 3.5-inch drive I could buy for the same machine. The
person asked me which company I worked for, and I explained that this
was a personal purchase and not for any company. I was immediately
transferred to somebody else, who asked me the same question.
for (i = 0; i < 6; i++) {
ask him which company he works for;
transfer him to somebody else;
keep him on hold for 5 minutes;
}
The sixth person promised to call me back, and never did. So my next
machine was a Northgate...
--
Rahul Dhesi <dhesi%cirrusl@oliveb.ATC.olivetti.com>
UUCP: oliveb!cirrusl!dhesidavidsen@sixhub.UUCP (Wm E. Davidsen Jr) (03/08/91)
In article <534@psitech.com> bob@psitech.com (Bob Posert) writes: | It looks to me like Dell is a DOS company that sells UNIX. I'd prefer | to buy from a company that sells mated software and hardware, and will | recommend purchases of real workstations in the future. Suns are | looking better all the time. I can't defend the support group because I'm not impressed yet, either. But I do disgree about the company. They have a very fine and competent UNIX development staff, and a support staff which isn't up to speed, seems confused and disorganized. They are not OEMing UNIX from someone else, they have in-house expertise, although it may not be getting the horsepower to the ground from the customer standpoint. I have tried to offer suggestions on how they could do it better, since I have been on both sides of support for some decades now, but I either haven't gotten to the right person or haven't convinced him/her that I have dealt with companies which do better and I can tell them how to do better, too. I believe that sales is looking for more features, while the customers are looking for the current features to be working better. However, I do have faith that the product will get the bugs worked out, and that I will get the bug fixed versions of the parts which are not correct. In the meantime I still find it worth keeping a personal machine to run their software. I had beta versions from three vendors, and the Dell is at least usefully stable. I really like having all the window managers and libraries, so I can run most of my X tools. For the record I am looking for: + a better X server I want 1024x768 and 1152x900. I don't want to compile the server myself, there aren't enough hours in a day to fix every utiltiy in UNIX over again. + gcc ready to run same story, yes I can (have) port it, but there's no time. I want to plug and play. The native compiler generates slow code beyond belief. The whole X library should be redone with gcc. + bus mouse support this has been dragging since November. It has cost them the chance to even be considered for a contract. I want my trackball back! Three things out of all of V.4 aren't too bad, and at least what's there doesn't crash all the time. I could say some bad things about the speed of the tape driver, but I made it faster by putting in 12MB of memory and using 3MB double buffering. Not subtle or cheap, but effective. Overall I would give Dell the benefit of the doubt on support for now. I believe they're putting resources into the problem, but not using them effectively as yet. I could be wrong, in which case I will have a huge SX systems and nothing to run on it, but for the moment I'm hopeful they will get their support act up to the speed of the technical staff. -- bill davidsen - davidsen@sixhub.uucp (uunet!crdgw1!sixhub!davidsen) sysop *IX BBS and Public Access UNIX moderator of comp.binaries.ibm.pc and 80386 mailing list "Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me
karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Karl Denninger) (03/10/91)
In article <534@psitech.com> bob@psitech.com (Bob Posert) writes: > >I've been reading in various messages about Dell's wonderful support >and would like to present an alternate view. .... (lots deleted) >It looks to me like Dell is a DOS company that sells UNIX. I'd prefer >to buy from a company that sells mated software and hardware, and will >recommend purchases of real workstations in the future. Suns are >looking better all the time. Don't do that! Get some MIPS workstations instead. They're cheaper, and they work. If you want an idea of how well Sun supports their machines, look in alt.sys.sun. There's a nice treatise in there from a user on this system about the problems he's had with the Sun machines. I can say from hard experience that he is absolutely CORRECT. Don't get yourself a BIG and EXPENSIVE disappointment. Buy something OTHER than Sun. -- Karl Denninger (karl@ddsw1.MCS.COM, <well-connected>!ddsw1!karl) Public Access Data Line: [+1 708 808-7300], Voice: [+1 708 808-7200] Copyright 1991 Karl Denninger. Distribution by site(s) which restrict redistribution of Usenet news PROHIBITED.