Re:Apple Training [Opinions from a UK perspective] (Score 1)

I gotta say my part here, I am in the UK and really bored of Apple treating us like 2nd class citizens here. The SysAdmin course for Mac OS X Server is still not even released here for 10.1.x!!! How can this be acceptable??? The company Apple UK are using for their training were unable to tell me when this course was starting, as they had still not received the training materials for the 10.1.x course, and this is at a time when this course is now not even worth the paper it is printed on. I went to the Apple Server Essentials and Mac OS X Admin courses and they sucked!!! I knew more when I walked through the door on day 1 than the trainer, I learned nothing, and wasted loads of my time and my companies money. In fact I ended having to show the trainer how to create the parent and child domains and the nfs or afp exports, and setting the automounts for network home dirs for OS X clients as I had done this work already. I was hoping that the course might shed some light on some of the other areas of the server OS, but no... And so now I am faced with having to teach myself again now that Apple have decided to move to LDAP, which while it is a technology I have wanted to get to grips with, I am now forced into a situation where I HAVE to learn it as my boss wants us to be using this when we rollout 10.2 server, all this without any real support from Apple. Now I think Apple have the best products in the marketplace, and I work for a company that is using 99% Apple technology in both the backroom as well as on the desktops. Also we are in an area that Apple are directly targeting at the moment (especially my company as we are rather prominent in our particular marketplace and known for using Apple products), but there is still SO much for them to do... and they are failing, and all because we are not in the USA!!! I am not a professional Apple beater by any means, in fact I have spent most of my professional life promoting Apple and encouraging people to use their products, but when the question of training comes up my blood starts to boil. Apple have released a whole new OS in X and moved the goal posts on Mac IT depts, we are left having to learn a whole new OS, UNIX, and a whole raft of new issues, I am glad to have the stability that X brings, but the support from Apple has been pathetic to non existent. All the emphasis has been on developers, which I can see is needed but why nothing for sysadmin's and why nothing or so little outside the USA? I love the features that X and now Jag brings, it is so cool that I happily spend my time digging around finding ways to get all these new features to work, but some useful pointers from Apple is not asking too much. I am the lead sysadmin for a company that spends nearly a million pounds sterling per annum with Apple in hardware and software, and even the professional support from Apple is awful. They do seem to be trying just now, but even the people selling the support don't seem to be aware that what they are offering isn't in place yet (the sales team that came to see us told me that the OS X SysAdmin course was in place and that the 10.2 docs were being worked on and should be in place for the end of September but as you can see I called their training centre and was told that there was no course as yet even for 10.1.x), or if it is you have to be in the North American continent. It is just not good enough! Now if you want to know how to get this working then I have it working on my test system, I need to work some more on it to be sure that it is working properly, as it has been a little buggy and I want to be sure that I am not telling you something that screws your systems as it has a couple of times here!!! :) I'll post back on Wednesday with some useful info...sorry for the rant but like I said it does make my blood boil!