Steve, I could try Tommy's Compaq - was not bad.
You're right about IBM in northern EU cities. Here in Spain you can find ISDN too - in Sevilla and Barcelona. Sounds good, is bad - cause most travellers visit Spain as tourists - and then you go to the Canarias, Mallorca or the "Costa del Sol" (where I am).
I would spend a fast modem to IBM <g>, but I know they decline every proposition that could be help to increase their profit <ggg>. That's their company-culture. (read "Computer Wars") A few bucks to CISCO - it's not a great thing to "create" a better dial-in.
More - I could live with PPP/28.800, all I need works fine at this speed. And I could live with their dial-in-points in Spain. But I cannot be happy as long as my dial-in-point has the technic of our ancients - and SLIP/14.400 is not acceptable.
So the promise "Global" is unfair - unfair when you stay f.e. in Almeria, Bilbao, Cadiz, Granada, St. Cruz, Las Palmas, Malaga, Palma de Mallorca, Pamplona, Toledo, Murcia, Oviedo, Vigo or Zaragoza. Most of these cities have a population between 200 and 500 k people.
More, it's stupid from IBM: there are hunderts of local providers, most of them with Spain-wide access over a special "Telefonica"-service, and IBM's advantage to serve good backbones to the US-parts of the web is - naturally - not commun here. For a Spanish customer is IBM less comfortable than a "55" dial-in (city-rate countrywide) and US-servers seem to him being slow... (not the backbone)
I'm sure - IBM cannot have good market-shares here. And this is stupid because they have the better (expensive) infrastructure; but they "must" spare on the equipment of the dial-in-points.
More, they make "international" customers like me angry without need: at the day I have a home in Spain I cut my wires to IBM and take a local provider.
It's like selling notebooks like mine (760E) without being able to supply a CD-ROM (!!!) for that notebook. (I ordered notebook and CD-ROM together without getting the CD-ROM) I swear, it was the last time I bought a IBM-computer.
We can transfer these individual and special examples to a general observation: It's a great problem of US-mentality (in business), that they forget to make sure the functionality of their products. In Europe, US customers have the image to buy anything "spontaneously" without getting angry if the bought product doesn't work. Of course, they file against the producer if their cat didn't survive the microwave, but those are exceptions - the rule is missing critic.
At least in Europe this doesn't work. Here you cannot file with anything - but you can get information before you buy (like everywhere) and mostly you can get non-US-products with better funcionality (this seem to be more difficult in US*). The former bad acceptance of f.e. DELL and Compaq in Germany was a result of their endless quality-problems. A well known German-producer musted stop his computer-production newly - and I'm sure, it was his missing quality too.
Another example of this - how I mean - typical US-problem is GM. Instead "importing" European knowlegde (like SUN and Compaq), they destroyed well working structures in their German "Opel", copying the mistakes of Ford a few years ago.
Like the "red" Russians, Americans love it to make "5-year-planning" - and like every "plan-economy", they forget sometimes the meaning of every production or service: to serve the customers needs.
No doubt, some US-products are known for quality: f.e. Levis or Wrangler - it's not an overall-trend I'm focussing in.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We can't work it out. I have more fun when I write nonsense.
Jury
* I read f.e., that you cannot buy well working "MIELE" products in US - this German producer shell offer his b-ware in US. I read the same about other German products (partly even for cars!) |
