Does anyone else get this feeling? (Warning: [rant on])

[krishna.murphy]

"When it comes to a ISP, why does it matter what OS I run?"

It makes no difference.

Let me use my ISP (Ignorant Service Provider) as an example - Clearwire.

CW, as an Employee explained to me, started up the Company great guns, got the money rolling, THEN FIRED ALL THE TECH STAFF.

The reason one gets an ignorant response to a technical question is that no one hires (or can afford to hire) competent people because they are EXPEN$IVE.

Its their JOB on the line, which is why they get defensive.They have cue cards and they read from them.

ISP Tech: "did you try rebooting the computer"

Me: "No, I just shoved a hot dog in the CD Rom drive and expected that to fix everything. Any more stupid questions?"

Yeah, I sympathize with your feeling, I feel that way myself when dealing with Tech Support, often.

Speaking as a former tech support coordinator for an ISP (a GOOD one, albeit not a leading edge provider), I'd say that ISPs generally can't support anything that isn't mainstream. They simply MUST staff for people calling in with NO (or minimal) tech knowledge (same problems over and over, no real challenge, but LOTS of time consumed), and when someone who knows more than they do calls in, they're likely to feel threatened. And it NEVER does any good to get upset (I used to remind myself of that constantly, people were often mad at me, even though we had done nothing wrong.) Since you're only ranting to us, your community online, not at the poor guy on the other end of the phone, I say "vent away!"

Cheers!
Krishna
p.s. I use WinBlows as needed - for instance, my wife has difficult navigating unfamiliar applications, despite being both Mac and Win-PC savvy more than most, so if I leave my laptop set up in Knoppix, she's likely to try to use it and get frustrated - who knows what'll happen to me then? But it is useful to me as well, as I can access certain IE-only websites, use Win-only apps easily, etc. What I'd really like to get done is to force Winders into a VM so I can restart it instantly when it (as usual) blows up for no especially good reason, and switch back to Linux quickly w/o rebooting to use really reliable apps. So if I need to talk to them, I just boot up in Windows (or start/reboot my Win-VM, ) and then when can go hand-in-hand over territory they're familiar with, and I can get what I need from them without anyone being upset.