Dominic,
While I agree very much with the point of your letter, and agree that
vendors should at least be honoring their warranty with respect to Linux
users (if not offering support for Linux itself.) I strongly recommend
you submit future letters to a friend, this list, or other resource for
spelling and grammar checking. To be brutally honest, your English is
atrocious, and in places barely understandable. While we are all guilty
of the same offence at times, (and while English may not be your native
language) "suits" (the business executives at Iomega who will be
reading this first) tend to judge the writer's intelligence based on
these types of errors.
Again, I agree with what you are trying to do, but try to pay closer
attention to grammar and spelling when representing the Linux community
in your corporate correspondence.
Loren
-----Original Message-----
From: Dominic Mitchell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Monday, May 24, 1999 6:42 PM
To: Iomega
Cc: Ftape
Subject: Iomega products and Linux
Here is a copy of the letter I have sent to Iomega
To whom it concerns,
I have been very deceived by the customer supports that Iomega
provides to their customers. I have purchased two years ago a tape
backup from Iomega, a Ditto easy3200 insider. Last night the drive
failed, it is still under warranty as the warranty expires on July 27
1999.
Calling Iomega I have been told that if I do not run a Microsoft
Operating system, then Iomega cannot do nothing about the drive.
Basically I need to be able to test the drive under Microsoft.
Since I do not have Microsoft installed, then it is like having no
warranty at all.
Since the unit is (was) working under Linux, I find that Iomega has
a very strange commercial policy. As it occurred to Iomega that
Linux is the fastest growing operating system on the market now?
Maybe those that decide the commercial policy of Iomega should get
some number straight? Getting officials number of Linux users is a
difficult task since the operating system, even though it can be
purchased from many distributors (like Redhat, Caldera, Suse,
Mandrake, etc. ), can simply be downloaded free of charge from ftp
sites all over the world. A reasonable estimates would be in
between 8 to 9 Million users and growing very rapidly.
Many important companies have backed Linux recently:
- IBM is building server with Linux running as the OS
- Intel and Netscape have invested in a Linux distribution Redhat
Software
- Oracle as ported its database software to Linux.
- Sybase
- Informix
- Dell is shipping computers with Linux preinstalled on it
- Corel as ported Wordperfect 8 on Linux and should release their
office suite for Linux this summer. Moreover they will be
releasing their Linux distribution by next Fall.
- Compaq (Digital)
- Silicon Graphics
I do not ask customer support from Iomega to have the drive working
under that alternative Operating System (Linux). *Unfortunately*
the Linux community has been doing a good job at this level. But
the least we can expect from Iomega is that they recognize when
their drives fail and this under any Operating System.
What is shocking is that Iomega would not even consider an advance
shipment, where you give them your credit card number and they ship
you a replacement drive and you send them back your broken drive or
any other form of customer support. By any such method they could
then easily check that the drive is broken. This is what is totally
unacceptable.
I have no other choice but to spread the word around in the Linux
community that:
1) if they have a current Iomega product running under Linux then
they cannot count on their warranty
2) If they are considering to buy Iomega product to run on Linux
then they should consider a competitor of Iomega who's
commercial practices are more supportive of their favorite
Operating System.
Dominic Mitchell
Deceived customer.
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