Re: Clearwire Broadband?

On 5/3/07, Beau V.C. Bellamy <beau@stellarnetservices.net> wrote:
<snip>
> Now to close my point... Given all that, is it worth it to the ISP right
> now? Would you dramatically increase the burden on yourself to officially
> support an OS that only a fraction of your customer base uses? Even if you
> can figure that most of them know it'll work anyway? If you answered "Yes",
> I'd be interested in knowing why you think so...

All very good points that make a lot of sense from the tech support
side. It also points out one of the difficulties in main streaming
linux, the vast number of variables to be considered.

That being said, if I was working in the marketing department of an
ISP, particularly one that was still struggling to get a foot hold in
the market place, I would push for linux support with an asterisk.

I would write up something along the lines of:

"**Works with many/most Linux distributions. However, we can't offer
tech support for Linux installations at this time."

Then I would reach out to local linux user groups letting them know
that the unsupported service is available. Perhaps offering a free
test drive for users in exchange for writing up documentation for
their particular installation. Then post that information on company
web site and print it out as a handout with their modems along with
the non support disclaimer and attribution to the user group that
provided the documentation.

The Linux desktop market is relatively small now, but it is growing.
With Dell's announcement of offering Ubuntu pre-installed on a number
of their boxes, it's only going to grow even faster.

If I was in the marketing department of any consumer computer
technology, I would start working now to position my company ahead of
that wave.

Bob Cortez
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Received on Fri May 4 10:57:22 2007