🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1gor8rINN63l@flop.ENGR.ORST.EDU> villalj@xanth.CS.ORST.EDU (John Villalovos) writes:
>I asked them if they supported the Internet and they said no.

I can assure you that charging for Basic language support is not done because
we own the market.  That's simply not true.  It is my understanding that all
too often, people find it easier to pick up the phone and call a free 
support number to ask a question that they could have answered for themselves
if they had read the documentation.  Since we go to a lot of trouble
to create accurate documentation, we don't think it's unreasonable to expect
people to read it when they have a problem. In fact, we'd like them to
read it before they have a problem but that rarely happens.

After a while support costs begin to get all out of proportion with what
you're making on the product. Now I don't suppose to know all of the ins and
outs of these things, but that's the gist of what I've heard about it.

As for the Internet support, we don't have any official support people dedi-
cated to support on the Internet, but we do have a number of people who
regularly read this newsgroup.  And those people regularly posts responses
to people who have posed problems or asked questions.  I suspect that
unless there's a compelling reason not to continue this practice, we will.
Contrary to popular belief, we don't go around trying to think up ways to
aggravate people.  We want happy customers who use our products to do
useful things.  I am a longtime Basic user and I just happen to work in
the group that develops Microsoft Basic products (including BC7.0, BC7.1, 
Visual Basic for Windows, and Visual Basic for MS-DOS.) If I can get an
answer to any question you have you may be assured that I will.


-- 
Frederick F. Freeland Jr.                        "Of all the things I've lost,  Microsoft Corporation                               I miss my mind the most!"   One Microsoft Way  
Redmond, WA 98052 (206) 882-8080                                                                                                                                internet: fredf@microsoft.com                                                   arpanet:  fredf%microsoft@uw-beaver.ARPA
uucp:     uunet!microsoft!fredf                                                                                                                                 Opinions expressed over this signature are my OWN and not those of my employer!