Re: [cobalt-users] Cobalt Support

[Kris Dahl <kris@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

on 1/27/00 9:49 AM, Doug Forman at doug@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> Cobalt reminds me of Apple Computer in the 80's - 'insanely great' products
> and 'insanely poor' product support.  The primary reason we formed Macintosh
> User Groups [MUG] in the mid-80's was to get the education and support Apple
> failed to provide.  I co-founded a MUG in 1985; today it still has over
> 1,000 paying members - almost 15 years later.  This [cobalt-users] mailing
> list - and Luke Tymowski's QubeQuorner (http://weblogs.userland.com/qube/) -
> serve as virtual-user-groups to get practical and "real" support for our
> [Cobalt] product questions.  Where else would we go???

Single largest difference between Apple and Cobalt would be in the
marketing.  Both use a similar distribution network:
    Manuf -> Distributor -> VAR -> End User
Except that the Apple Targeted real end-users--students, people at home,
small business, basically everybody.  Cobalt is targeting IS professionals,
small shops that need a server/server appliance.  There isn't a cobalt Qube
on your secretaries desk, and they aren't trying to cater their support to
your Secretary.

They are relying just as Apple had to do, on their resellers and the
distribution network.

I know that I am probably starting to annoy people with repeating this all
the time.

You don't buy an HP Netserver plug it in an expect it to work wonders for
you.  I had to go for a week of intensive training on the entire Netserver
line, and I still have questions (for example, I can't remember what memory
crossbar architecture really means anymore :) ).

Same deal with IBM & Compaq.  True that Cobalt hardware isn't anything fancy
really.  But the software is more-or-less the same as you'd find on a
high-end HP.  It's not rocket science, but it isn't a piece of cake either.

I'm not really sure why Cobalt is considered so much different than other
server makers.  Probably because the price is targeting smaller companies
that don't have IS people that have learned these lessons the hard way.  I
would partially blame Cobalt for marketing their product (seemingly) always
easy to use and always perfect.

NORMALLY everything works perfectly out of the box.  Cobalt has done some
really excellent QA on 90% of the scenarios that are out there.  Its that
10% that kills 'em.

So.  If you are planning to hook up a Qube to a DSL line, with a private
network and use it for sharing files and as a firewall/NAT device, then
Cool.  If you are going to be serveing web--probably cool too, typically
apache doesn't need any tweaking to do almost everything you'd want.  If you
are doing email, that is fine, so long as you aren't doing anything weird.
But if you are planning on doing a lot of different things--perhaps not as
the machine was intended--and its going to be mission critical, I think you
should get a safety net.  When you have a problem with Sendmail or Apache,
it sure is nice to know someone who can go "Oh.  You just need to add a php3
handler in your httpd.conf", etc.

> If Cobalt were my company, I would be very *proud* of my products, and
> extremely *embarrassed* of my customer support.  But I suspect no-one is
> embarrassed; I further suspect that this is all part of a pre-calculated
> business plan...  push as much product (profit) as possible, and provide as
> little support (expense) as possible.  Simple arithmetic.  Not rocket
> science.  Not many other things, either...

I would say that their end-user support should be better.  I would say that
they probably should be embarrassed by it even.  I would also say that they
need to stress the importance of VARs in their marketing.
 
> Perhaps your experience has been different.  Better?  I hope so.  I can't
> remember reading the last posting to this list ranting about how "great"
> Cobalt support is; perhaps I missed it?

I've had pretty decent luck.   Its been hit or miss.  When I used to ask our
rep to give me a hand in getting support, he would always make an effort,
and I always got help.  But the relationship went too ways.  We worked with
Cobalt and the Cobalt rep to better serve our customers (who were also
theirs).   Two heads are better than one, I guess.

And it worked.  I can safely, gladly, and happily say that every single
client that purchased a Cobalt product from us is happy with our solution.
Not a single one has ever had a problem with Cobalt support (they've never
needed to use it).  If you ask my former clients, I'll be that they will
tell you that Cobalt's support is excellent.

-k