On 10/10/2006 1:51 PM, Austin Murphy wrote:
> I have only dealt with Symantec/Veritas after the merger and my
> experiences haven't been great.  My gripes:
> 
> - Sometimes I can get decent support, but usually the tech people need
> to "research" the issue or ask someone else.

That's always the case if your problem is non-trivial.  When you get to 
the backline folks, you'll find that they're solid with a good depth of 
knowledge.

Now we talk to them a lot as result of the upgrade.  We have contact 
information that I hope for your sake you'll never need.

> - 6.0 is scary.  How can they release backup software that may or may
> not schedule your backups depending on its mood?

This was certainly an anomaly.  Previous releases have not been this bad.

I can tell you that 6.0 is getting better - MP3++ still has a handful of 
critical issues but patches for those have been applied to the MP4 code 
base.  We're expecting to install a pre-release of MP4 soon (I could 
tell you when but then I'd have to kill you :-)).  I expect you'll be 
able to get MP4 in the not too distant future.  We heard rumors on this 
list of a GA release date of October 15 for MP4.  I can tell that in all 
likelihood, that date is not realistic.

Trust me when I say that MP4 will be a *lot* better than MP3.

> - Our account rep is unresponsive too.  You would think they would at
> least be motivated to help you give them your money.  No, it takes
> hours to get any kind of information out of them and they don't even
> know how it is licensed.

Go to a reseller - you really don't need to deal direclty with Symantec. 
  In many cases, you'll get far better sales support from a reseller. 
Try a company such as Datalink - great sales reps and people who 
actually know what they're talking about.

We've had cases where getting a license directly from Symantec has taken 
many *months* - purchasing new licenses from Datalink last week got us 
the keys in 2 days.

> - Licensing is convoluted and undocumented (in my searches).

Yup.  No argument there.

        .../Ed

-- 
Ed Wilts, Mounds View, MN, USA
mailto:ewilts at ewilts.org