STINKY VENDORS, STINKY MFGS,STINKY PRODUCTS,STINKY GROUP

Somebody needs to start telling the truth about the current state of wifi vendors, products, etc. As you know the real truth can only be told anonymously and posthumously.

It is nearly impossible to find a good wifi manufacturer. There are a few, very few really good dealers out there. I come to this conclusion after weeks of searching for a good driverless client adapter bridge, but it applies to nearly all wifi products.

Go to most ANY page with user reviews and you will invariably NOT BE ABLE to FIND ANY ONE PRODUCT that 90% of what are obviously well skilled knowledgeable end users rate as good or excellent. They ALL have major problems. And most mfgs. offer NO TECHNICAL SUPPORT OF ANY WORTH. One exception I found to this was a Belkin product which is known for making quality products, but which are often expensive and not very versatile. One good dealer I found was netgate.com

Try contacting the mfgs. They will mostly send your email to dev/nul (the wastebasket) and are exceedingly poor at designing easily accessible web pages (often due to competitive paranoia). But mostly whether by email or phone, whether you have bought the supposedly guaranteed product or not you will get zip or even worse wrong information. Their tech support depts. must be paid $5 and recruited from homeless camps. The companies put out drivers that do not work and crash systems and their other information on their products is sketchy or false.

Go ahead and try to find good products, with good support it is an exercise in futility.

And then there is this group, inhabited by techno nerds who really do not want to help anyone new to the field, which is MOST of the people trying to use wifi. They often ignore requests for help and/or reply in obtuse terms which the objective observer can only interpret to mean they either do not know themselves or are purposely trying to confuse. They think because they have been around awhile that others have to pay homage to their so called expertise, which means often they just learned it yesterday themselves, the field is progressing so fast and really has not many universally accepted standards or terminology. It is the blind leading the blind mostly.

Things will evolve over time. All the shitty mfgs out there will go belly up, unless they have bill gates clones on board. And all the crap dealers with their bogus (theft) restocking charges for defective products, their lies and shipping mistakes will also fold and with God's or Satan's help hopefully there will be a few good companies to choose from. It is amazing that the stupid American consumer puts up with this bullshit.

Until then I strongly suggest that prospective buyers check out the products before they buy THOROUGHLY. Do NOT rely on dealer and/or mfg. promises-they are often false. DO NOT assume you will get tech support because you usually will not.

Buy LOCALLY from a store that has a MONEY back return policy and that you can SUE locally if they do not stand behind their warranties. The net is a mostly a place of frauds and deceptive practices these days-a kind of fairy land where the customer gets no respect and is often led down a primrose path by companies that spend most of their energies in marketing ala Billy Boy's dishonest strong arm tactics. (MS is proof the BIG if anything equates to poor quality and poor service).

To all the flamers out their, I'm not going to bother answering you, so FUCK you in advance.

Reply to
soothsayer
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Neato. Flame bait. What fun.

Yep, and you're not that person.

How many questions have you tried to answer? It's not difficult. Just a little experience and some research usually comes close. As for ignoring requests, I'll make you a deal. Find me a question that bothers to include:

  1. What problem are you trying to solve?
  2. What do you have to work with? (Hardware, OS, Versions)
  3. What have you done so far and what happened? and I'll answer the question. That's about 1 or 2 questions out of perhaps 100 per day in alt.internet.wireless. Anyway, I just answer the easy questions and let everyone else try to answer what's left.

If you have problems with obtuse techy terms, just ask. It's difficult to determine one's technical abilities from a few words in a usenet news posting. However, in your case, it's easy.

Great idea. Please start paying homage to my Paypal account. Any amount of tribute will be sufficient as it helps support my decadent and lavish lifestyle. The huge amounts I collect from answering questions for free will of course be spent on more wireless toys.

I like my knowledge fresh. It's called "learning". The terminology does change daily. I've even contributed a few buzzwords to the field. I've also tried to straighten out one term of obvious confusion (bridge):

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this is rather fresh and I would not expect you to accept it. Perhaps we'll let it age a few years and see if the vintage is then to your liking.

True. Everybody lies. But, that's not important because nobody listens.

We just lost 2 out of 5 small retail computer dealers in Santa Cruz because they were sued for various specious reasons. If everyone followed your advice, all that would be left are the big box stores and mail odor. If you want to sue someone, I suggest you take on the manufacturers and not the dealers who have little voice in the quality of the products they sell.

May I humbly suggest that you also perform a physical impossibility to yourself.

Incidentally, your IP address resolves to:

208.180.124.28 PTR record: cdm-208-180-124-28.gtwn.cox-internet.com. Which is Cox Cable in Georgetown, Texas.
Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

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Awwwwright, Jeff! lol

-- Louie Gainesville, FL (eat the flies to email)

Bore, n.: A person who talks when you wish him to listen.

Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914), The Devil's Dictionary

Reply to
Louie

duplicates on purpose due to remailer unreliability

Haha, high Jeff ;-) Even when u flame your hard to dislike, I must admit.

After a month of advanced searching what should be fairly easy questions to answer and products to find, as it is with nearly all other tech questions I have, I think I qualify.

Ur kidding right? Used Copernicus and half a dozen other search techniques. The problem is what's out there, not my research.

You're better than most of the people here and have provided some very good information. But you alone are not enough. And newbies cannot always supply every last detail, they may not even know what is relevant. At first I thought it was just my posts being ignored, but then I saw so many others going unanswered. Maybe a bigger group is needed, but you won't get that till others start answering new users posts.

Sorry if you took my post personally because it was not directed at you per se, but mostly to the mfgs./dealers and lastly to the group as a whole. The usenet is getting to be of diminishing value overall and people are using elitist methods more and more to decide what posts to answer.

Already ordered some books cuz finally concluded the only way to get good answers was to consult with books on the topic. But the main thrust of my post is directed at the lousy companies, mostly mfgs. and to a lesser extent bad vendors who hawk their stuff with little regard to the end user. They don't want to talk to you unless you talking big bucks and that is irresponsible for a company marketing end user products.

I listen. And so far all I hear are a litany of complaints from knowledgeable users who are buying crap products every day and returning them infrequently cuz they are too tired from the struggle. Consumers deserve better treatment and until the DEMAND it they will continue to be treated with disrespect.

Amen, they deserve to go under if they market stuff they a) know nothing about, b) do not support, c) do not honor their warranties, and generally use poor business practices. Hell I can't even get them on the phone half the time. Sue, sue and more sue is my motto.

There ya go again, suggesting the impossible... haha

Hahahaha, ur kidding right. Yeah that IS my IP, congratulations expert. Hope you know more about wifi then u do about IP tracing.

Reply to
Nomen Nescio

Haha, high Jeff ;-) Even when u flame your hard to dislike, I must admit.

After a month of advanced searching what should be fairly easy questions to answer and products to find, as it is with nearly all other tech questions I have, I think I qualify.

Ur kidding right? Used Copernicus and half a dozen other search techniques. The problem is what's out there, not my research.

You're better than most of the people here and have provided some very good information. But you alone are not enough. And newbies cannot always supply every last detail, they may not even know what is relevant. At first I thought it was just my posts being ignored, but then I saw so many others going unanswered. Maybe a bigger group is needed, but you won't get that till others start answering new users posts.

Sorry if you took my post personally because it was not directed at you per se, but mostly to the mfgs./dealers and lastly to the group as a whole. The usenet is getting to be of diminishing value overall and people are using elitist methods more and more to decide what posts to answer.

Already ordered some books cuz finally concluded the only way to get good answers was to consult with books on the topic. But the main thrust of my post is directed at the lousy companies, mostly mfgs. and to a lesser extent bad vendors who hawk their stuff with little regard to the end user. They don't want to talk to you unless you talking big bucks and that is irresponsible for a company marketing end user products.

I listen. And so far all I hear are a litany of complaints from knowledgeable users who are buying crap products every day and returning them infrequently cuz they are too tired from the struggle. Consumers deserve better treatment and until the DEMAND it they will continue to be treated with disrespect.

Amen, they deserve to go under if they market stuff they a) know nothing about, b) do not support, c) do not honor their warranties, and generally use poor business practices. Hell I can't even get them on the phone half the time. Sue, sue and more sue is my motto.

There ya go again, suggesting the impossible... haha

Hahahaha, ur kidding right. Yeah that IS my IP, congratulations expert. Hope you know more about wifi then u do about IP tracing.

Reply to
soothsayer

Whilst this is obviously not the way to go about it (i.e. original poster), there is a bit of truth in there when it comes to the state of WiFi. I've only recently started using the technology although I've been in the computer business for 25 years and the general level of confidence has dropped compared to other computer components. I've had a higher percentage of returns of WiFi goods, more random reboots and crashes that normal and I seem to spend my life "getting the latest firmware and/or driver".

I guess this is because it's relatively early days for cheap all-in-one routers combining ADSL modem, routing capabilities, firewalls and switches. By their very nature, these devices are pretty complex and therefore will generate a higher level of technical support queries.

Cheers, Rob.

Reply to
Rob Nicholson

(clip)

Anonymous, Nomen, and whomever you might represent to be at any given time:

May I assume (from having seen other posts from you - and perhaps others, in case the other identities on the product line weren't you) you're excoriating, castigating, and otherwise execrating KeenanSystems/Engenious/Senao products, and to a lesser degree, the "support" you've received here?

I, too, waited with bated breath for Jeff (Keenan, not Lieberman) to chime in again as he did, ONCE (well, I've only been reading here for a few months; there may well be other, earlier, instances), to resolve difficulties with his products. His failure to show either sez he's not reading this group, or he's purposefully ignoring you. However, he's also purposefully ignored direct email from me on more than one occasion where I totally non-confrontationally asked for help in resolving persistent Senao conflict problems, so perhaps that's indicative. FWIW, he's not alone, as the Senao vendor I used is stonewalling, too.

While "Not Jeff's Fault," I, too, own a few hundred bux worth of useless Senao gear, and have similarly found all the advice herein to be conflictatory, bombastatory, and, in the end, useless. (N.B. *to me*) However, I'm coming to the conclusion that a goodly dollop of that insufficiency is based on the hardware, not the opinions. That is, don't shoot the messenger - unless someone's dealt with the exact same problem with the exact same gear, I conclude that all bets are off as to the workability of any advice. Certainly it's been my direct experience with the kind folks who have attempted to solve my problem.

And back to your premise and presumed stimulus, I'm no happier than you - but I'm not shooting the messenger. But I am about ready to admit defeat and eat what I bought, because the CC companies back up the sellers when they assert what was sold works properly, despite extensive logs and email correspondence to the contrary.

L8R

Skip

Reply to
Skip Gundlach

Homage, is that anything like course grits? Does ebay accept corn and lye as payment ?

fundamentalism, fundamentally wrong.

Reply to
Rico

Forgive me if this is a bit disorganized. I've been getting interrupted by customers bearing paying work a bit more often today than usual.

I think otherwise. There's no guarantee any question will be answered on usenet or by support. However, I am curious. What question did I miss? I usually ignore ones that I know nothing about, can't figure out the question, are lacking in data, or are just boringly simple.

I'm not kidding. I just use Google and sometimes Yahoo. Works for me. You learn more by answering questions than you do by asking them. On the rare occasion when someone actually thanks me and offers something in return, I always suggest that they find some topic they know fairly well, and answer a few questions. The problem with all search engines is that you must know the vocabulary and buzzwords before you can do an effective search. The ability to do effective filtering also relies on regex (regular expression) notation. One also has to be a fast reader or skimmer as search engines always produce too many hits.

Perhaps if you ask yourself why anyone bothers to answer peoples questions, you might have a clue as to why there are so many questions and so few answers. Throw in the minor detail that my heroic and often abrasive attempts to get people to supply what I consider to be the bare minimum of information has totally failed. Even those that ask questions repeatedly still cannot grasp the concept of describing what they are trying to accomplish, and not getting lost in where they're stuck. Some people that answer questions work for wireless vendors or suppliers and thus have a financial interest in being helpful. These come and go. When business is good, they're mostly gone.

My guess is that there are about 100 new questions each day in alt.internet.wireless. It takes me about 15-30 mins each to provide a complete answer. I can answer more if I supply one-line answers with no substance, explanation, or substantiation. Is that what you want? Realize that I've also been correctly criticized for being rather sloppy and offered to take more time to check my pontifications, which will result in fewer questions being answered. So, do the math. How many answer people do you think it will take to completely answer 100 questions per day?

If you don't mind, I find that statement rather hilarious. I was recently engaged in a dinner discussion with some of the usenet "old timers" that have been around since the stone age of usenet news. Some lament that value of usenet is diminished by the debasement of values by the GUM (great unwashed masses) and that what's necessary to revive usenet is almost an elite to the the GUM the way to righteousness. I subscribe to this theory in that it is always better to uplift the masses than to suppress the elite.

Maybe. Books are usually a good start. However, if you want current information, the internet is best. With usenet, data is free. Information must be fought for.

Yep. That's about it.

So, how much MORE money are you willing to pay to get decent products and better support? I'm serious. There were 120 million Wi-Fi devices sold in calendar year 2005. How many users of those 120 million devices had any type of problem? How many were returned? I have some numbers for some manufacturers, but can't leak those. Let's just say that the numbers were very small. My guess is that it will take perhaps a 50% cost premium to cut those numbers in half. My experience shows that it doesn't matter how perfect the product, there will always be support issues. One support manager recently mentioned that 70% of the calls were over issues that were either in the docs or on the web pile. About 10% were solved with a commonly available firmware or driver update. What's left are usually difficult questions that could not be easily answered. How much would you pay MORE for your products to have those difficult questions answered by a well educated and trained support person? Want it to be an across the board price increase, or would you prefer to pay per incident?

Well, people that don't have problems with their wireless hardware have no reason to ask questions in newsgroups. What you're seeing are only those with problems. As for better treatment, the cost of personal hand holding has to be paid by someone. Either everyone pays with a general price increase, or the individual with the problem pays with a per incident charge. There's no free lunch or free support.

Lovely. Please not that the dealer usually does not deal with warranty issues except on systems that the dealer builds. If there's something defective with the hardware, the dealer just passes through the warranty to the manufacturer.

You might wanna read my warranty when I was building systems:

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's a reason I created that certificate. Many customers seem to think that because I touched their computer, I automatically inherit warranty responsibility for everything inside. It doesn't work that way.

As for getting someone on the phone, I charge for my time. When I get email from users in this newsgroup wanting personal support or answers, they get a nastygram explaining how I consider that to be billable consulting. Like many employees of wireless companies, they'll answer questions in public forums for free because they are trying to help. However, the same questions via email or phone support is billable.

As for poor business practices, that can be handled by the local better business burro, and does not require legal intervention. If you think a law had been broken, there's always the district attorney's office. If you can demonstrate financial damages, then by all means, sue.

See:

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your postings didn't show up last night on Newsguy, probably because they contained a banned word. They did appear on SBC's news servers.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

The average small computer retailer cant 'support' each and every product they sell, there is just too wide a range of stuff for them to have expertise in all of it. And in the UK at least there is no legal obligation on a retailer to provide 'support' at all.

If you want 'support' or help installing a product then find an expert and pay them for their time.

Stuart.

Reply to
Stuart Robinson

Jeff, may I acquire a backup of this "diploma"? Some of my "clients" seem to think I should fix things that had nothing to do with the reason why the machine was brought in, in the first place. Thanks,

-- Louie Gainesville, FL (eat the flies to email)

Bore, n.: A person who talks when you wish him to listen.

Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914), The Devil's Dictionary

Reply to
Louie

"Louie" hath wroth:

Of course. However, I would rewrite it. Unfortunately, all I have left are a few printed copies. The original was created using "Certificate Maker" on an Apple Mac SE running System 6.x. This was one of the programs that never made it to System 7.x. If I get inspired, I'll either scan it to a PDF or re-created it with a more modern program. Any software that creates diplomas will work. The local office supply store sells a small bundle of fancy paper that includes a CDROM with software and borders. However, I would NOT use my text exactly. I no longer charge cost for the hardware and I suspect that few others would do the same.

Meanwhile, all I have is the JPG scan.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Thank you, the JPG will work fine. I'll import it with a graphics app and rewrite as neccessary, then enlarge it so it's visible from the entrance. Thanks again.

-- Louie Gainesville, FL (eat the flies to email)

Bore, n.: A person who talks when you wish him to listen.

Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914), The Devil's Dictionary

Reply to
Louie

snipped-for-privacy@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us added:>

Have no trouble following your replies, except when you are talking technically above my head on wifi issues.

Gee, I thought I already apologized if you took the post personally. You seem to think you have sole responsibility for answering posts here? Not true.

Just because a post is answered once, does not necessarily mean that answer is going to be easy to find; and I know all about regex and searching and am no novice at this. Often it still takes a long time to find exactly what you're seeking. There is simply not as much out there on wifi as not as many people are using it. Also, a main problem is finding products that are any good. Most aren't. Plus I can speed read. As far as answering questions goes, and not talking about you here Jeff, I give as I get; many users have to get setup for wifi network before they can begin answering questions on a regular basis.

Most of the people who REALLY know the topic are not on the usenet answering questions and they are not in tech support either, they are too valuable for that. You I think are an exception as you obviously know wifi and RF engineering.

Again, why do you take the group criticism as YOUR criticsm? I was comparing this group to other groups where the response rate across the board is much better. The other thing is you may not be getting all the posts? All I can tell you is that there have been many posts from multiple users, not just mine that have gone unanswered with the poster sometimes following up with a HUH?? I have no criticism of your posts, they are generally very good and to the point on wifi.

Well, that's a philisophical point we do not really need to continue discussing I think. I will say one other thing, and that is as the masses use wifi, the expectation for the products will probably degrade, since we can already see the level of taste of the masses in their media consumption and who they elect as President, haha.

Nope, public library works, often. Just I am (stupidly) stuck behind a keyboard so much I keep thinking that is the best source of information. Often it is NOT.

Not all though. Some companies actually take pride in their end user support. Like Belkin's lifetime warranties. newsgate.com is a great dealer, except they market products from senoa/engenius which are not good companies for the consumer, imnsho. A quick look at the reviews at newegg.com generally shows how shoddy wifi products and customer service are and newegg, which customers so gullibly call good charges a routine theft(imo) fee for products that are falsely advertised or do not work. The gullible american consumer gets what he/she expects-bad service and theft charges.

I am gladly 20% paying more from a local store that does not try to rip me off and will give a money back 30 day warranty then to buy from some shoddy mail order outfit or a mfg that does not even extend the courtesy of answering emails on it's own products. I suggest others do the same and then we will get rid of all these shoddy companies. Also tell that tech manager, that IF most of these outfits could write a decent web page, then MAYBE users would not have to spend an inordinate amount of time and energy fishing out information that should be right there up front,easy to find. Also tell them to quite trying to profile and track users from their web pages. I'm not going to fill out a page of personal info just to look at their usual crap products.

What will happen is that the companies that provide support for their products will win and those that won't will lose. Actually I may be wishing in vain, considering that MS puts out such junk and is still successful. That is my hope anyways. If your going to put a product out there it should WORK and you should FULLY warranty it, imo. Read the reviews. These are not newbies complaining, but those that have extensive wifi experience. The products are by and large poorly designed and poorly implemented and poorly supported.

I don't care who takes the burden, as long as I can return it in good condition, and get my money back.

Have not ordered from you and thus no reason to read it. Bought my last two systems at yard sales for $5 and $10 fixed them (easily) and not have two good systems, plenty powerful enough for my needs. Much better than ordering from a crap company like Dell with all it's shell game promotional techniques and facist like ordering practices. Much better than accepting crap OS's and other garbage software that comes with store bought boxes. AND, I have no depreciation-done buying $1000 machines that are worth $50 in 3 years time.

Haha, you better check your mail filters, you don't even respond to some mail. As for charging for support. If you sell the product, I will not buy it unless you support it.

Haahahahaha. BBB? your joking again? They exist only to support the businesses they allegedly rate. They are a joke.

The IP you gave bears NO RELATION to my originating IP. You better find a new locator or start reading alt.privacy.anon-server.

Yeah, another example of internet degradation. Gratuitous censorship.

Reply to
Nomen Nescio

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