In article <1993Oct28.163059.125595 at embl-heidelberg.de>,
omond at embl-heidelberg.de (Roy Omond) writes:
> In article <2aoc8sINNs2l at sat.ipp-garching.mpg.de>,
>krasel at alf.biochem.mpg.de (Cornelius Krasel) writes:
>>>> since our group is moving away from here and therefore does not have anymore
>> access to GCG we think about purchasing our own copy. For this reason I
>> would it appreciate very much if one could tell me the address of the
>> GCG distributor in Germany (if there is one :-) since I would like to
>> obtain information about GCG, esp. the UNIX version.
>> Thanks in advance, Cornelius.
>> You know, one of the things that really annoys me is when companies start
> to establish "distributors" in different countries. It usually means that
> the customer (you and we !) ends up paying *more* for the product. In
> addition, the so-called "value-added" support you ('re meant to) get from
> a local distributor is nearly always less than you'd get by dealing with
> the company direct. In these days of pretty-much universal Internet (or
> at least e-Mail) access, I find that one gets much better support/response
> to problems via the network either via the various bulletin boards or else
> direct by e-Mail to the vendor.
I would need a little more convincing about that argument. Commercial users
often do not have Internet access, and suppliers in the USA cannot offer
telephone support easily, or even respond rapidly to E-mail questions (or
to FAXes) when they are fast asleep.
A European support service could be useful to the Commercial, rather than
Academic, users of any specialist software or hardware. Commercial users
of GCG, of course, pay more anyway.
As Roy is in the next office, we can continue this discussion privately :-)
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Peter Rice, EMBL | Post: Computer Group
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