It has become pretty standard practice to require a potential customer to
fill out a form so some pain in the a$$ salesman can bug the crap out of
them BEFORE they try out the product.  It's not about making friends and
winning customers, it's about populating contact databases.  There is also a
disturbing trend toward making ALL support pay as you go.  Thank God for
mailing lists and Google.

Unfortunately, it's only going to get worse.  In a down turned economy like
we have now, everyone is going to take any avenue they have available to
squeeze a few extra bucks out of us.  The days of free anything might be
over, at least for a while.

Just my two cents.

Jim Edwards

-----Original Message-----
From: Oscar NOSPAM Olsson [mailto:spam1 AT QBRANCH DOT SE]
Sent: Thursday, June 05, 2003 10:41 AM
To: NETWORKER AT LISTMAIL.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Subject: Re: [Networker] Where have the binaries gone?


On Thu, 5 Jun 2003, Hrvoje Crvelin wrote:

HC> If You need newer version like patch version then You can use
HC> Web site.
HC>
HC> If You wish to download something that is not there, You should
HC> use PartnerNet access.

I think most customers prefer anonymous FTP. To sum up what Legato needs
to do in order to catch up with the non-mainframe world is:

* Allow downloads for product patches (like the nsrjb bug in 6.1.3) from
the web without registration
* Make the knowledgebase public - like cisco and microsoft
* Allow downloads of all upgrades etc with anonymous FTP - and then love
the authorisation with the strict licensing system that is enforced
* Enhance the support to the standards of the Cisco TAC

Playing it like Legato does now will only make customers look at other
products, especially when software maintenance is expensive as it is,
compared to other products.

//Oscar

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