Mark...my apologies if I've overstepped here. I thought about trimming more of your quoted text below, but I think Al and Irfan need to hear what customers are saying about 3Com/CommWorks. Also sprach Mark Thornton

I just got of the phone with the evil ones and confirmed that I will have to start smuggling drugs in order to pay for software downloads only with no tech support. The cost of the actual tech support would require more than the profit margin on drug running allows!

While on the phone it was noted that something is going to happen on or about May 1 the will significantly affect 3Com RAS customers. I don't know whether it will be good or bad, but when has something good come from this company?

They claim they are losing money on support. My response is that if you make a poroduct that is reliable there wouldn't be a support problem. I also indicated that if the support contracts were reasonably priced ( I described my Cisco contracts and the level of support I get) then they wouldn't be losing money. Let's face it, we are professionals. What we need is good code, not a bunch of phone support folks. Sell software support at reasonable price and a lot of folks would buy it.

I don't think this thought can be emphasized (and forwarded ;) enough. If support contracts were available reasonably, then more people like the people on this list would purchase them. By and large, the people on this list only call 3Com/CommWorks when we either have equipment die and needs to be replaced, or we find a bug in *their* code and want to report it to them. I can pretty much guarentee you that if support were reasonably priced IgLou would get 24x7xnext business day hardware and software support on our equipment. That's a pretty significant amount of revenue for support that 3Com/CommWorks *isn't* getting right now. And you can pretty much ask anyone around Rolling Meadows that about the only time they hear from me is when 3Com/CommWorks pulls some sort of idiotic move like EOL'ing the quads, when I have hardware fail, or when I am reporting a bug to them! That's easy money Al, but you're not getting it right now, because you're being so fascist about your policies. Go back to Econ 101...Sometimes the solution to making more money on a product is to *lower* the cost of it. Supply and demand curves and all that jazz. 3Com/CommWorks pretty much has a whole list of people right here hosted at XMission that they could get extra revenue off of if they'd just make their pricing reasonable.

BTW, given the tone of the conversation I don't think there is a chance in the hot place that quads are going to be supported. I got the feeling they are trying to figure out how to not support anything at all, but then they pretty much have that wired now. I am going to contact my equipment rep now and see what the options are going forward, but it doesn't look good. My initial thoughts were that with the cost of DSP's under $2500 and a software contract it didn't make sense to look at the Patton's or others. Patton couldn't give a good enough price to meet the difference. If software support is no longer available then that analysis is no longer valid. I don't really want to take on a new lease for dialup gear but that may be the way to go. -- Jeff McAdams Email: jeffm@iglou.com Head Network Administrator Voice: (502) 966-3848 IgLou Internet Services (800) 436-4456

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