Yes.
I am not trying to be biased but i was quit impress with the tools and
SLA Microsoft has. And they solved our problem.
I'm desperately trying to avoid a flame war, but I am very curious about
a couple of things:
1. What kind of SLA will Microsoft offer to a small business or an
individual user?
2. For the case above, where the poster spoke to a kernel developer,
what kind of response was promised in the SLA and how much did it cost?
For the record, I use Windows, because a specific toolchain I need isn't
going to be ported to Linux. But where I can (which is nearly
everywhere else), I use Fedora, in fact, I do most of my email, "Office"
work, and presentations using Linux. I've found Microsoft support to be
expensive and antagonistic to customers. A recent experience bears this
out.
I have an issue working for a friend now where MS support is needed. My
friend entered "DLL Purgatory" because of a defect in a version of
MSVCRT.DLL, used by just about everything on the system. The Knowledge
Base article which discloses the defect announces a hotfix for the
problem. But to get the hotfix, one must place a toll call to Microsoft
and pay the charge for a service call to obtain the fix.
The Microsoft technician has the discretion to decide whether to charge
you Microsoft's fee for the consultation, but in any event, you pay for
the phone call. So no matter what you do, it will cost you money if
you want your system to work. My friend didn't do anything except
install Service Pack 2, and her system went south. Now her system is
degraded and it will cost her to recover it.
For those who are unhappy with the support one gets from the Linux
community for free, I must ask: Is this kind of support worth paying
for? I am grateful for the support of this community. You all do great
things.
Erik
