Dear friends:
What has your experience been like with Linux-Mandrake, i.e. Macmillan's
free guaranteed email tech support?
I have been using Linux for nearly two years and have supported it
financially by purchasing its CD's. I began with Red Hat's 5.2 Power
Pack (or whatever it was called then), then switched to Mandrake: since
then, I have purchased the Mandrake 6.1 Power Pack, then the Mandrake
7.0 Power Pack and now the Macmillan Mandrake De Luxe Edition.
I was most fortunate in having very strong and generous support during
the critical first months from our Linux mailing lists, first the Red
Hat list, then the Mandrake lists. Similarly, I was very pleased with
Red Hat's 30-day email support. After registering Rh 5.2, I would send
my questions to Red Hat and receive a very professional response within
24 hours. Of course, their free tech support, as is the case for most
distro's, is understandably limited to INSTALLATION issues only, but
their email tech support was professional, reliable and prompt.
I much prefer Linux-Mandrake to Red Hat. In fact, I have looked at the
various distro offerings (and new ones, as they are issued) and have
come to the conclusion (though I am an ORDINARY user, NOT a programmer),
that Linux-Mandrake, with the richest set of features (such as
DrakConf), a fabulous installation program, every desktop environment
you could wish and more applications than you could ever dream of and
very user-friendly, plus the fact that it supports Red Hat rpms, is
optimized for 586 and has security built in, is the ideal distro. As you
can tell, I am extremely pleased with Linux-Mandrake and look forward to
each new version with much excitement.
HOWEVER, I cannot help but wonder whether, like me, some of you are
perhaps less than thrilled or even dissatisfied with Macmillan's very
limited tech support. Since Macmillan is now the official, exclusive
distributor of Linux-Mandrake in North America, it is, I believe, fair
to ask our Mandrake 7.1 users who have purchased Mandrake from
Macmillain what their expectations and experiences have been like.
First of all, some of you may not know that Macmillan's free email tech
support (and, if you are no longer a newbie, try to imagine yourself
being one) is limited to exactly TWO free incidents. I repeat: TWO FREE
INCIDENTS AND NOT ONE MORE. Anything beyond that costs money.
Secondly, let me share my experience with you: I registered my LM Deluxe
with Macmillan online on a Tuesday night and sent them a letter
concerning lilo configuration of my Linux/Win98 system. According to the
agreement that you are required to sign, you are entitled to 2 incidents
and are promised that you will receive a response within 24 hours (that
is, during working days). I did NOT receive a response for at least 5
working days. When it arrived, the response was admittedly professional.
I was pleased with that. But I was not pleased by the lack of
promptness.
I am by now an "old hand" :-) at installing, configuring and
reinstalling my Linux, etc. But even for an "old hand", it would seem
that 2 incidents are just not enough. For a newbie, this is, I believe,
terribly unfair. He/she certainly deserves a lot more than that. I would
suggest at least 10 incidents per user.
What have your experiences with Macmillan's tech support been like? What
are your feelings on the subject?
I am raising this issue as a way of helping newbies get the tech support
they deserve and as a way of making Mandrake aware of the situation.
Is Macmillan Mandrake doing a good job of providing free email tech
support to its customers, especially for newbies, or not? And is it
doing enough? And has it been prompt?
And what about those of you who get your Mandrake from Mandrake itself
(I guess in Europe). How good and how extensive is Mandrake's own
guaranteed 100 day free email tech support?
Yours,
Benjamin
Benjamin and Anna Sher
Sher's Russian Web
http://www.websher.net
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
