Road Runner Doesn't Do XP 438
PerlStalker writes: "Internet News has an article up that mentions, among other things, that Road Runner (owned primarily by AOL/TW) will not support XP. From the article: 'Road Runner, the second-largest cable Internet service provider (ISP) in the nation with more than 1.4 million subscribers, does not support the controversial new operating system (OS) for its customers and will not support its use on the cable network.'" Note that this doesn't stop customers from connecting to Road Runner from XP systems, but until their staff is trained specifically, Road Runner won't help them with technical problems arising from that combination.
From one monopoly to another (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Works just fine here... (Score:1, Funny)
Re:XP? (Score:5, Funny)
I think he means the "Athlon XP". Road-Runner only supports Intel chips from now on.
:)
Re:Linux and RR (Score:4, Funny)
As I stated in another response, I've gotten support for both Linux and OpenBSD by calling late at night. I had a guy walk me through setting up networking on the OpenBSD box... I had never tackled it before.
I called during the previous day to see if they could help. The guy kept asking me which version of Windows I was using.
"OpenBSD."
"No sir, like I said, I don't need to know what applications are installed, I just need to know what version of Windows is on your computer. Is it 98?"
"No, I'm running OpenBSD"
"Sir, click on the start button and tell me what it says to the left of the menu."
Geez.
Re:Hrm (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Linux and RR (Score:3, Funny)
They told me it was my problem for choosing an alternative opperating system, not theirs.
The key is to never, ever mention that you're running anything from whatever is the most common, otherwise they'll immediately blame your system. I recently had an incident where my cable modem couldn't connect to the local node (i.e. the cable/block-sync light was out), and upon calling and telling her that my cable light was out (pretty cut and dry issue) she immediately started walking through reversing the TP cable to my computer from the cable modem, Windows 9x steps to renew my DHCP certificate, checking if I could get to websites, etc. (all the time I'm pretending that I'm doing what she asks, hitting keys on my keyboard, etc. I actually have a FreeBSD firewall talking to the cable modem and doing NAT sharing for several XP/2000 machines, but of course I'm not going to mention that, and in any case the situation was brutally simple: My cable modem couldn't communicate with them. The bloody light doesn't lie. Anyways eventually she tells me to get out my Windows Me install disc (for the phantom Windows Me that I don't have installed) to reinstall some drivers at which point I exclaim "Uh, I really don't think this will help: The cable modem block-sync is out. That's the problem there". She replied "No sir, I'm communicating with your cable modem right now. It has an uptime of 5 days, blah blah". Well the funny thing is that since she kept insisting that she was talking to my cable modem, I had disconnected the cable from it about 90 seconds prior. I exclaimed "Well it must be a magic cable modem then because I unplugged the cable". There was silence on the line, and after a long pause she suddenly says "I'm sorry sir, it's my mistake. I must have entered a wrong number." and she setup a service call.
Anyways I found that pretty funny how some techs have that "list of things to do" and they don't listen to the customer. If I hadn't pretended that I was doing her Windows ME steps she'd have informed me that I was running an uncertified setup or whatever and that would have been that.
You know it's a slow newsday when... (Score:0, Funny)
Nothing new under the sun (Score:3, Funny)
My ISP, Bellsouth [bellsouth.net], did the same when Windows2000 was born. So it was funny to see the rp-pppoe.tar.gz on the "drivers CD" and the note on their site about not supporting Windows 2000.
Actualy, it makes the most sense for a serious company: Do not support a new product unless you have people trained in that product.
It should't be so "unusual". Actualy, the article would have been more shocking like this:
"YouNameIt ISP supports Windows XP even before October, 1st."
"We do not need no stinkin trainin', said Joe Sixpack, CEO of YouNameIt ISP. "
"Any bozo with a hand able to point-and-click should do fine with any Windows version. And if anything happens, well, the Client Agreement made the user to surrender any right to protest against us. Heck, in the Alient Agreement even states that we take no responsability even if the user cannot never connect to internet!"
Re:Linux and RR (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Why should RR support *any* OS? (Score:2, Funny)
Most users *don't* think rationally.
I worked in the ISP business.. i know...
Re:Big deal. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Big deal. (Score:3, Funny)