Re: Informix support: Where are you?

In article <1992Apr22.123342.492@halexv.uucp> greg@halexv.UUCP (Gregory F. Hogg) writes: >Let me restate my position on INFORMIX tech support. I understand >that they can not allways drop what they are doing and fix the bugs I >find. Thats just not going to happen. What gets me is that they >require I have maintenance, i.e. tech support in order to recieve the >updates that I need. Now I don't know about you but paying for tech Ah, but how do you know when you "need" an update if you don't have support? How do you know when you've run into a genuine bug? If it *is* genuine, how do you determine if it is fixed in the newer release? If you find compatibility problems with the new release, what do you do? Just stick it on a shelf? Geez, think for a minute. The first problem you ran into, you'd be calling support trying to figure things out, and you'd (in theory) be turned back. Would you actually PREFER that as policy? >support that has NEVER been of any real help is a ripoff. I would Hmmm... I'm *real* tempted to post several examples where *your* comments regarding Informix product usage were outright wrong... but I digress. Suffice to say: you're living in a glass house, dude. >LOVE INFORMIX to change there upgrade policy so that I can just pay >for the upgrades I need and not the tech support that I find a waste. Without info from support, how do you know whether you need an upgrade in the first place and, if so, *which* upgrade? >At least ORACLE lets you pay 50% of the product to upgrade WITHOUT >paying for tech support. Another poster followed this with a cost analysis which showed that this policy actually costs you *more*... > And the real killer with INFORMIX is that >if you don't have maintenance they charge you 50% more to get it. Correction: if you HAD maintenance and then let it *lapse*, then there is a charge for *reinstating* maintenance. Otherwise, you could just buy maintenance right before you wanted to update (to get the free update). *MANY* people used to do this; thus the change in policy. The new maintenance pricing policy may have removed the lapse penalty in conjunction with charging for updates; I'm not sure. -- Alan Denney aland@informix.com {pyramid|uunet}!infmx!aland Disclaimer: These opinions are mine alone. If I am caught or killed, the secretary will disavow any knowledge of my actions. Smith and Wesson: the Ultimate Point-and-Click User Interface.