Comment On All You Can Download

I have run into a simular setup: One PC with 200GB of video files and one laptop. The problem with the bad internet connection was solved in the famous quote "What does this 'unsecure open network found' mean?"
That is what I call "All you can download" and for what a price.

So the WTF is that he was tricked twice into giving advice for free?

I really try not to be a biter elitist when it come to computers, but some people just deserve what they get.....

Chalk up another victory for dumbass managers who won't take the expert advice they've paid for.

bjolling has a point: One of the first rules of the IT business is that your knowledge is what makes you valuable.

Someone on the sales side of an IT business once described this as "If someone asks you 'When was the Battle of Hastings?' the correct answer in a customer-facing position is not '1066' but 'Why do you need to know?'" In this case, the technique is to get Michael to describe his problems in exquisite detail, use appropriate questions to demonstrate expertise, and say "I can solve this for you for $X". If he asks for more detail on what you'll do, use technospeak that he won't understand. That's how you can get a client rather than giving away free consulting so Michael can hire his brother instead of you.

Uncle Buck:

Frist!

Thanks for commenting, I'll let you know.

The package was called "All You Can Download", not "All You Can Upload". That package was another $5 a month, and the landlord refused to pay it, so we didn't get it.

they went from 95 and nt4 to vista a year later....? they must of been hanging onto that 95 machine.

So the real WTF is that they upgraded to Vista?

Piercy:

they went from 95 and nt4 to vista a year later....? they must of been hanging onto that 95 machine.

Never change a running system. Also, never pay for things you've already running. As long as everything is good enough running, there is no need for more, until you have the money ;)

Now let me power up my 300 baud modem and get this comment posted and I'll be first!

Piercy:

they went from 95 and nt4 to vista a year later....? they must of been hanging onto that 95 machine.

If it ain't broke...

We've still got a Win98 machine sat on the desk next to me. It gets regular use FTPing and whatnot.

First post via dial-up.

Surely you can use DSL on the same line they had for the phone/modem? What does the landlord have to do with it?

Sorry, I was on the phone. What did I miss on the intarweb?

They were "brining in Jason"? Ewww

EatenByAGrue:

bjolling has a point: One of the first rules of the IT business is that your knowledge is what makes you valuable.

Someone on the sales side of an IT business once described this as "If someone asks you 'When was the Battle of Hastings?' the correct answer in a customer-facing position is not '1066' but 'Why do you need to know?'" In this case, the technique is to get Michael to describe his problems in exquisite detail, use appropriate questions to demonstrate expertise, and say "I can solve this for you for $X". If he asks for more detail on what you'll do, use technospeak that he won't understand. That's how you can get a client rather than giving away free consulting so Michael can hire his brother instead of you.

Indeed, I learned this valuable lesson about one year ago. Our consulting company (A) was competing with another one (B) to implement a trade processing system with the client (C). (B) won the implementation and we (A) won the functional and technical testing phase.

After 6 months, the client wasn't too happy with what was implemented by (B). We had discovered plenty of issues that explained this but we also suggested the workarounds whenever possible.

At one point the client asked us to propose an alternative technical design. We happily obliged and provided them with a fairly detailed technical design in the hopes of winning the task to clean-up the mess that (B) had delivered. And the client gratefully accepted our proposal and gave it to the competitor and asked them to change their implementation accordingly.

Of course the client still has a shitty application since company (B) even failed at stealing our design correctly. In the end the client lost but they don't care. Their project manager got his promotion and is now a director.

GCU Arbitrary:

Chalk up another victory for dumbass managers who won't take the expert advice they[s]'ve[/s] haven't paid for.

fixed that for you.

As soon as I read "5.3kbps" I knew exactly what was coming. It doesn't surprise me that some companies still use dial-up but it does surprise me when they complain about the speed. What the hell else do you expect? You don't need a consultant, you just need to spend five minutes learning about the limitations of copper wire networks.

EatenByAGrue:

bjolling has a point: One of the first rules of the IT business is that your knowledge is what makes you valuable.

Someone on the sales side of an IT business once described this as "If someone asks you 'When was the Battle of Hastings?' the correct answer in a customer-facing position is not '1066' but 'Why do you need to know?'" In this case, the technique is to get Michael to describe his problems in exquisite detail, use appropriate questions to demonstrate expertise, and say "I can solve this for you for $X". If he asks for more detail on what you'll do, use technospeak that he won't understand. That's how you can get a client rather than giving away free consulting so Michael can hire his brother instead of you.

Very true. I recently changed jobs and on a couple of interviews was asked to solve the production-problem-of-the-day. I've seen this before and knew to give just enough information to let them know I could solve the problem, but not enough for them to solve it. When pressed, I said that I would happily answer technical or theoretical questions, but would only solve production problems for someone if they employed me.

Afterwards, I found out that in both cases, nobody was hired and the job posting was withdrawn - they were just looking for free advice.

Anonymous:

As soon as I read "5.3kbps" I knew exactly what was coming. It doesn't surprise me that some companies still use dial-up but it does surprise me when they complain about the speed. What the hell else do you expect? You don't need a consultant, you just need to spend five minutes learning about the limitations of copper wire networks.

Said the technologist. Most folks running small businesses use the internet and computers as a necessary evil, but don't really want to know anything about how any of it works. "I have a connection to the internet; why would it be slow?" usually results because they don't know that there are different kinds of connections, and they don't want to know.

Cheap is all that matters. Current/appropriate/correctly set up are irrelevant.

zyzyx:

I really try not to be a biter

That's what she said.

Oh boy this story reminds me of working as the part time "computer guy" for my uncle's company when I was a teenager.

Their office had 10 computers (plus one Novell Netware server), not 2, though.

Task 1 was to get them off of the 286 and 386 DOS boxes that they were using in mid-1999 and migrate to a then-relatively-modern arrangement of ~400MHz computers running Windows 98 (and NT4 for the server). Worse than the technical aspect was the training. Not a single employee was under forty, and most of them had managed to avoid ever using Windows, or even a mouse, all the way to 1999. Let alone the new application software.

Being an insurance adjustment business, lots of photography was involved, and they were actually eager to get away from expensive film developing and into digital cameras. They were willing to lay out the dough for a digital camera for each adjuster, but not for a networkable color printer. Instead, they decided to make to by buying a consumer-grade cheap-as-hell color inkjet for each adjuster's office. They were slow, horrible quality, and frequently broke from volume of use. They eventually did spring for nice networked color laser a few years later, thank god.

The Internet was a whole different story. Much like the WTF article, they didn't have broadband capability at their office and weren't willing to pay a few hundred to have it installed (or more than $19.95 a month for the connection, for that matter). So, of course, the entire office shared a 56K modem.

The network setup was even more hilarious. The wiring was so old that it struggled to stay connected at 10Mbps half-duplex. They weren't willing to pay for the 12-port router that they needed, so I had to settle for using a consumer-grade cheapo 4-port router, hooked into the ancient 24-port hub that ran their old DOS/Netware network.

Backups? Ah, backups. Their idea of backups was to put a CD-R drive in one of the secretary's computers, and burn a CD of the files on the server every few weeks. Of course, this never actually happened because the network was too slow to prevent buffer underruns if you tried to burn directly from the network, and copying everything to the local machine first took way too much time that they needed to use for other work.

Man, I really don't miss being there.

"Hmmmmmmm," Michael said, rubbing his wrinkled chin, "I'm a blithering idiot, make more money than you, and somehow my cheapness hasn't completely destroying my livelihood. . . yet"

Anonymous:

As soon as I read "5.3kbps" I knew exactly what was coming. It doesn't surprise me that some companies still use dial-up but it does surprise me when they complain about the speed. What the hell else do you expect? You don't need a consultant, you just need to spend five minutes learning about the limitations of copper wire networks.

Cause cobber wire networks are limited to 56K modems? Nothing called ISDN, ADSL, ADSL2, ADSL+, SDSL or the like that run fine over cobber?
Hmm, I guess my 20Mbit connection is just someting i'm imagining then

What are these cobber wires you speak of?

bjolling:

So the WTF is that he was tricked twice into giving advice for free?

Exactly, this guy is TRWTF, not the company. They got a free description of exactly how to fix their problems TWICE.

Anonymous:

As soon as I read "5.3kbps" I knew exactly what was coming. It doesn't surprise me that some companies still use dial-up but it does surprise me when they complain about the speed. What the hell else do you expect? You don't need a consultant, you just need to spend five minutes learning about the limitations of copper wire networks.

I don't necessarily agree with the wording of this statement. You can still use the same phone line with the same "copper wire" on DSL and dial up, but DSL is quite a bit faster.

Slicerwizard:

zyzyx:

I really try not to be a biter

That's what she said.

Well played, Sir!

Anon:

What are these cobber wires you speak of?

It's the Australian word for copper

5.6k up is actually pretty impressive. 56kbps download speed dialup is (iirc) asymetric, with the upload portion of the bandwidth being in the region of 10-12kbps theoretical maximum.

I know that sometimes, being an engineer, the opportunity to solve a problem outweighs the commercial value of standing there saying "I can solve this for $1000" to a company too tight to pay $180 for ADSL :-$

Incourced:

Surely you can use DSL on the same line they had for the phone/modem? What does the landlord have to do with it?

Not necessarily. DSL requires you have a reasonably short length of copper between you and the DSLAM equipment of the phone company.

In the part of the US I'm in, if you are in a fairly recently developed area, no problem. If the buildings were put up more than 15 years ago, but it is an urban area, it's about a 50/50 gamble as to whether you have a short enough run for DSL to work. If you are in a rural area, you more than likely can NOT get DSL service and are stuck with either dial-up or dial-up/satellite combo choices for internet access.

Like fueling your truck via a small cocktail straw. There is an analogy people should have no problem understanding.

Is it really that difficult to do a basic cost-benefit analysis? Or could he not explain that what takes 5 days on POTS takes 5 hours on a T1? Surely they must use the Internet for something else. I'm not sure how they can afford to tie up the Internet for so long. Don't they use email?

Skip ahead one year to present day, and Jason had all but forgotten about Jera Co. That is, until he suddenly got a call from the office manager.

Then he suddenly completely forgot everything about Jera Co?

I woulda been the "frist" post, but I submitted the page using my 56k modem...

pitchingchris:

Anonymous:

As soon as I read "5.3kbps" I knew exactly what was coming. It doesn't surprise me that some companies still use dial-up but it does surprise me when they complain about the speed. What the hell else do you expect? You don't need a consultant, you just need to spend five minutes learning about the limitations of copper wire networks.

I don't necessarily agree with the wording of this statement. You can still use the same phone line with the same "copper wire" on DSL and dial up, but DSL is quite a bit faster.

Yeah yeah, I'm talking about analogue over copper wire but I've always used the term "copper wire network" for this (guess I'm showing my age).

Michael's decision not to upgrade was the correct one assuming that 1) he could get that cheap landlord to fork over the $180 in the next year and 2) that secretary's salary was no more than an average of 69 cents per day.

It's all about TCO, people.

SR:

We've still got a Win98 machine sat on the desk next to me. It gets regular use FTPing and whatnot.

And the best part is that you can find all sorts of new movies and software on it every single day.

Koppernicus:

They were "brining in Jason"? Ewww

he was a very salty guy.

Yep, download and upload are not the same thing.

And, the boss didn't want to pay to run the line "on principle"? What? Is he nine years old?

Pol:

I woulda been the "frist" post, but I submitted the page using my 56k modem...

I miss my old 2400 baud modem, when you could read the data coming across... local SysOp always knew it was me because I was the only one left going that slow. :)

(Yeah, completely off topic. But what's there to say beyond "boss is clueless, contractor needs to stop giving free advice"?)

I just love these jackasses who ask for help they desperately need, then turn around and do what they want, anyway. *shovel to face*

DWalker59:

Yep, download and upload are not the same thing.

And, the boss didn't want to pay to run the line "on principle"? What? Is he nine years old?

That'd make him mentally older than my boss...

DWalker59:

And, the boss didn't want to pay to run the line "on principle"? What? Is he nine years old?

If someone says "it's not the money but the principle", it's the money.

DWalker59:

And, the boss didn't want to pay to run the line "on principle"? What? Is he nine years old?

There's nothing wrong with adhering to principles. It's equivalent to adhering to a moral code.

And yes, it often is costly to do so. Otherwise it would be called "doing the financially benefical thing" as opposed to "sticking to principles".

If your point was that this particular principle was invalid, that's a different argument.
It is an invalid argument. A landlord (unless agreed to otherwise) has no obligation to update the internet connectivity. But the company that pays the $180 then owns the upgrade and can attempt to force the next tenent/landlord to reinburse them when they move out as a leaseholder improvement.

Of course, that's only true where I live. Other geographic locations for some reason have different laws.

snoofle:

Most folks running small businesses use the internet and computers as a necessary evil, but don't really want to know anything about how any of it works. "I have a connection to the internet; why would it be slow?" usually results because they don't know that there are different kinds of connections, and they don't want to know.

So, use terms they can ("might"?) understand.

For example, a 20-story office building with a small water supply, perhaps something appropriate for a 2-family house. "I have a water connection; why should I lose pressure when 20 people try to wash their hands at the same time?"

Of course, you'd probably just get a blank stare.

At one point the client asked us to propose an alternative technical design.

That's kind of what you get, for providing a free technical design -- a deliverable that has value in and of itself.

GCU Arbitrary:

Chalk up another victory for dumbass managers who won't take the expert advice they've paid for.

I didn't read that they paid for any advice. Just free quotes/proposals. Next time they call I'd be too busy to talk with them.

One step forward, two steps back.