🚀 go-pugleaf

ywliu@beta.wsl.sinica.edu.tw wrote:
> 
> >> As Windows GPFed in '95, I heard Tal Barenboim saying : <<
> 
> : Hello There
> 
> : We are now evaluating the US Robotics Total Control NetServer Solution
> : from US robotics.
> 
> Our conclusion, based on our experience, is : good product, lousy
> manuals, and zero service. If it works, everything is fine. But if 
> you run into problems, like us, you have to pay for a support contract,
> or you get zero service.

I will concur on this fully...  USR has great hardware and it can
do really neat stuff, however their support is terrible unless you're
willing to shell out lots of $$$ on top of the lots of $$$ their 
hardware costs. When we initially installed our Total Control stuff,
everything worked fine; however when we upgraded some of our modems 
to 28.8 a year later, the nightmares started.

> I don't understand, while we pay a big money for a Netserver card, and we
> still have to pay more for the firmware upgrade. I know Livingston won't
> charge their users for the firmware upgrade; ironically  when Netserver
> is an old version of Portmaster from Livingston.

In our case, I don't mind paying for software upgrades if I'm not 
on maintenance.  In fact, the incident that broke the camel's back 
involved an upgrade we paid lots of money for.  What really offended 
me about USR is that if you buy a product and it does not work out 
of the box, you have to pay them more money before they will talk 
to you to help you get it working.  In my book, they should at least
provide you with one call to a person who knows something before they
start the meter.  All we ever got were calls returned a month later
by clueless tech support folks who didn't know their product.  (I
guess they assign the brand new tech support folks to the customers
who don't have support contracts.)

> We may abandon our future purchase of more Total Control series and turn
> to other alternatives. We won't stand still for this ripoff.

Since I refuse to be held hostage by my vendors, we dumped USR 6 
months ago for AT&T Paradyne...  They don't have the millions of
features that USR has (they don't have an integrated terminal server)
but they have great modems and wonderful, responsive tech support.

--zawada