[Search for users] [Overall Top Noters] [List of all Conferences] [Download this site]

Conference 7.286::digital

Title:	The Digital way of working

Moderator:	QUARK::LIONELON

Created:	Fri Feb 14 1986
Last Modified:	Fri Jun 06 1997
Last Successful Update:	Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:	5321
Total number of notes:	139771

3564.0. "Is this the perception on the street?" by 34873::PEREZ (Trust, but ALWAYS verify!) Fri Dec 09 1994 08:55

    I had an interesting experience last week with a first-hand view of
    customer opinions at a 3rd part training...
    
    I attended an Oracle training class at Oracle.  During the introductions 
    I did not indicate that I worked for Digital, so only the instructor
    knew my employer...
    
    A couple days into the class there was a discussion of what hardware to
    purchase to run Oracle on.  Various machines were touted, and since
    they were talking about the latest "hot box" I brought up the Alpha.  I
    was told by another student, who "works for the government" that "If
    you want Oracle to fly, buy an Apollo box.  It'll WAY outperform the
    Alpha."  When I questioned him, he indicated that they had done tests
    of the Alpha box, and that a standard Apollo "ran rings around it,
    cheaper, faster, all-around better"...  And this was supposedly a
    2-processer 275Mhz Alpha...
    
    The next day, during a break, there was a discussion of PCs.  Once
    again the same student made a statement "YOU KNOW WHO MAKES REALLY
    LOUSY PCs?".  DIGITAL!  Needless to say, this perked my ears up.  So, I
    put my newspaper down and asked why he felt this way.  "Because when
    you run a bunch of applications in Windows, and the PC runs out of
    memory, it hangs!"  One of the OTHER students replied replied that this
    was NOT the PCs fault, it was the operating system, and that her PC,
    which is not from DEC, also did this.  If you want to monitor such
    things, you need to install the software to keep track.  His reply was
    "Well, Digital put the operating system on the PC, so if it hangs, its
    THEIR fault...  THEY should install all the tools to automatically
    monitor and make sure things like this don't happen."  I asked him how
    familiar he was with DOS and such, and his answer was 
    
    	"I haven't used any other PCs.  I never touch them, I know
    	nothing about them, I try to stay as far away from PCs as possible, 
    	but that doesn't matter."
    
    Now up to this point, I had been calm and pleasant.  BUT, with 20
    people listening to this garbage I found it impossible to ignore his
    comments.  I replied in a slightly more carrying than normal tone "It
    seems odd to me that the company that went from not even selling PCs to
    the #6 seller in the world in 2 years, who has hundreds of thousands of
    satisfied PC customers all over the world, would build a LOUSY PC. 
    Essentially, you sound like a typical ignorant little piss-ant who
    should learn something about the equipment and operating system before
    spouting uninformed, worthless opinions..."  I felt a little bad later,
    but not too...
    
    I'm getting tired of this.  I know Digital's screwed up, but are there
    large numbers of people on the street who really believe this kind of
    crap?

T.R	Title	User	Personal Name	Date	Lines
3564.1	My two penn'orth.	42371::POWELLM	Nostalgia isn't what it used to be!	`Fri Dec 09 1994 09:13`	9
	It is a million times quicker and easier to destroy a person or a company's reputation than it is to build it in the first place! That is why we should always be so careful before mouthing off about DIGITAL and the way it treats its own people when non-DIGITAL people may overhear. Malcolm.
3564.2	but we have other loyal customers...	CSC32::C_BENNETT		`Fri Dec 09 1994 09:39`	7
	For every one of the type eluded to by .0 there are 5 who believe in Digital products and it's employees. It sounds like this type of person mentioned in .0 has made their mind up and has set loyalities. It's the other 5 people who are loyal Digital customers we need to concentrate on serving and selling.
3564.3		58323::ODIAZ	Octavio, MCS/SPS	`Fri Dec 09 1994 11:48`	10
	The guy is probably an old Apollo customer, with an axe to grind on Digital. HP bought Apollo many years ago and I haven't heard anybody refering to the HP WS as "Apollo" in many moons. There are always one of those guys in almost every kind of forum. Unfortunately, even if their comments are clearly baised, people who hear them some times listen to them and is difficult to avoid/correct that damage. OLD
3564.4		AXEL::FOLEY	Rebel without a Clue	`Fri Dec 09 1994 11:57`	5
	The guy was suffering from cranial-rectal inversion. mike
3564.5		NPSS::BRANAM	Steve, Network Product Support	`Fri Dec 09 1994 12:16`	7
	I have a stock analogy for those unable to distinguish software from hardware. In this case, I would phrase it something like "If you poured water into the gas tank of your car, would you be upset with the manufacturer if it ran poorly?" A car is only as good as the gas that fuels it. Software is the fuel that makes a computer go, so a computer is only as good as the software that runs it. By providing Windows, Digital is simply supplying the most popular type of fuel with its PC's.
3564.6		NPSS::BRANAM	Steve, Network Product Support	`Fri Dec 09 1994 12:18`	4
	And BTW, most people haven't a clue what goes on inside the box, so the distinction is generally lost on them. In our environment, we are used to dealing with people who can make the distinction, but in the real world, it's all magic.
3564.7	he was a loud-mouther ignoramus!	ROMEOS::TREBILCOT_EL		`Fri Dec 09 1994 16:06`	41
	Usually people who make statements like this (and I had one...) are very ignorant! They are like know-it-alls who need attention so they make these outrageous statements without having any foundation for them... ignorant, stupid...and I'm GLAD you gave him a set down! I had a customer (Consillium) that was having a problem with their PC hanging. Before I even went out there I knew what it was...a third-party application that was competing for memory addresses reserved by windows... (Checkmark's product does the same thing) But instead of the customer listening to me, I had some Macintosh lover (PC hater) who made a big stink in front of everyone saying how it was the Digital pc that was the problem! He went on to say our pc's were terrible and they were the only pc's giving problems. Knowing this was HIGHLY unlikely, I had them do an equal test, testing ALL pc's (they had several different vendors) in a fair testing environment and lo and behold! They all failed! The problem was a 3rd-party IP stack! I even found the MIB conflict. The customer's answer? He wanted me to go into the hardware and change something, "...a jumper or something..." to make it work with that product. The end finding was that he had convinced his management to buy several licensed copies (over $20,000 worth) of this 3rd-party product before finding out a) Whether it was supported b) Whether it worked Well it didn't and rather than looking bad to his boss he very loudly vocalized that it was the Digital PC that was a piece of junk and tried desperately to have them return all of them (over 50) Our reseller wasn't helping anything by agreeing with him (I thought they were supposed to be on our side?) but in the end I got past that "jerk" and talked to his boss who loves Digital products and was able to explain what was REALLY going on rather than listening to a loud-mouthed jerk like that rant about something he knew nothing about like your guy!
3564.9		WHOS01::BOWERS	Dave Bowers @WHO	`Mon Dec 12 1994 14:33`	14
	A classic story on keeping your mouth shut when you don't know: Several years ago a sales rep. (from a company making hospital laboratory supplies) was talking to a customer (head of microbiology at a major NY hospital). Customer: I see here that your Eagles' Media is $125.00/case. Isn't that awfully expensive? Rep: (who hasn't a clue): Well sir, you know, with the environmental laws and all, how difficult it's getting top acquire eagles blood.... Customer: Oh, reeeaallly? By the way, we haven't been formally introduced. I'm Dr. James Eagles...
3564.10	Time to shout The rumors of our demise are greatly exaggerated!	ANGLIN::PEREZ	Trust, but ALWAYS verify!	`Tue Dec 13 1994 11:37`	23
	I wouldn't have minded him being critical if he'd done it off-line. In fact, I would have been curious to hear about what kind of problems he perceived us to have since it may have provided information to feed into the pipeline here. BUT, instead he made his pronouncement in front of 25 other people, all of whom work for companies using or planning to use Oracle, some of whom are currently using DEC equipment, some of whom will UNDOUBTEDLY be buying PCs in the near future. It surprised me, but I guess there's still some loyalty left for the company 'cause it surely ticked me off when he started bashing a product that I suspect (I've never been given access to one of our PCs for use) is a good product. Anyhow, I'm glad to hear that these kind of boneheads are only a small minority of people out there... In the past month I've been in more contact with outsiders than I've been in the past year. There must have been a dozen people who asked me socially about whether Digital is even going to exist in 6 months or a year... It was disheartening to meet so many people who wondered about our imminent demise... They all knew we were having problems, but NONE of them knew about the fastest boxes on the market, or the resurgence in the PC market, or even that our printers have had great reviews in some of the trade magazines...