Flaming Winmodems

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Ian
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#16 Post by Ian »

Much like the man who built the electric car that cost $1 for electricity to travel 1000 miles and $250,000 for the extension lead.

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#17 Post by Guest »

My view on this winmodem issue..


People don't like being told what they have will not work and if they want that particular functionality they have to acquire something that that will work.
It's not the fault of Linux...it's the fault of harware manufacturers refusing to support Linux
You have a modem either A it will work or B it will not work

If your in catergory A then all is good

If your in catergory B then you can either C choose to acquire the correct hardware or D choose not to acquire the correct hardware.

If you fall into catergory C then all is good

If you fall into catergory D, the choice is yours but please do not bitch and moan...the choices are there, the decision is yours.

Yes I know it can suck being duped into buying what you thought was a hardware modem....but the super cheap price should really sound alarm bells in your head.....and if you new to computers\linux buy, beg, borrow or otherwise acquire an extrenal modem of the non-usb variety
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Walt H
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#18 Post by Walt H »

bladehunter wrote:My view on this winmodem issue..
[snip]
You have a modem either A it will work or B it will not work

If your in catergory A then all is good

If your in catergory B then you can either C choose to acquire the correct hardware or D choose not to acquire the correct hardware.

If you fall into catergory C then all is good

If you fall into catergory D, the choice is yours but please do not bitch and moan...the choices are there, the decision is yours.
First off, I'm not a big fan of oversimplification, and I think this part of the post is an oversimplification of what I tried to relate. Besides which, being on a budget, after buying a brand new Linux system, I was not able to buy and should not have had to think about buying a new modem. In addition, as I mentioned, I don't really have the desk space for yet another piece of hardware. Is everyone saying there are no newly made internal modems that work easily under Linux?
bladehunter wrote:Yes I know it can suck being duped into buying what you thought was a hardware modem....but the super cheap price should really sound alarm bells in your head.....and if you new to computers\linux buy, beg, borrow or otherwise acquire an extrenal modem of the non-usb variety
Why should the price sound alarm bells? Computer prices are dropping all over the place; I would expect the same to happen with Linux systems. As it was, the comparable Windows system was less expensive. When a vendor advertises a system as being either a Linux system or a Linux-compatible system, it and all of the components in it should be exactly that. Yet I suspect that even companies that sell nothing but so-called Linux systems are making the same misleading statements about their systems and components.

If you go back to my original post, I never said the modem didn't work. The problem is that the system, billed as a Linux machine, should have been billed as strictly a Xandros (or perhaps Debian) only machine. The machine included a driver for the modem, so it did work under Xandros. However, moving to another distribution meant that the modem would no longer work without a lot of effort, except in the case of Puppy, which had the necessary driver available.

Perhaps I should have been clued in by the fact that certain systems were sold with Xandros on them and others with Linspire, and none of them offered any choice of distribution, but I wasn't. It did strike me as a little odd, however, I was so excited at finding a new "Linux" system I could afford (in fact, I settled for a slower machine in order to get a Linux system when i could have bought a faster Windows machine, after rebates at least, for the same money), that the alarms did not sound.

Finally, while I am not a programmer, I am not all that new to computers or to Linux. I've used computers for nearly 15-years and have had nothing but Linux on my home machine for more than two years.

I feel like there is more I want or need to say, but I already feel like I'm in the position of having to defend myself or my purchase, and I'm too tired to do any more of either one.

To Bruce B: I wasn't really offended by your post. It's just that I've read similar sentiments before and for some reason it finally struck a nerve. It's just that I see little things like this as being impediments to an even wider acceptance of Linux as a viable alternative to Microsoft. While not everyone cares if this happens or even wants it to happen, I think it is important to have alternatives to Windows if for not other reason than the fact that one company should not be able to dictate what computers can and cannot do or how they should or should not look and operate. I don't see Apple as that alternative because of price. Price is one reason why I see Linux as the one viable alternative. So I occasionally get a little upset when there is something that seems unnecessary (to a non-programmer, simply a user) getting in the way of Linux fulfilling its promise on a wider scale as that alternative. In this case, it may have seemed that I was trying to shoot the messenger :) , for which I apologize.
Walt

Now that you point it out to me, the answer seems painfully obvious.

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#19 Post by Guest »

To me Linux is like a high performance motor vehicle, it is usable by most people with some amount of skill, but, to get the most out of it you need to learn how it works, you need to listen you need to feel to take it to the next level.

Actually I reckon what I said wasn't an over simplification...It's just the way it is.

I could have sugar coated it but what's the point it would be the same message, if I was more diplomatic would have been easier to swallow ?

15 years.....Surely you should have known to do more research........

But Walt settle down dude....we all make mistakes or get duped and for what it's worth it's only a modem nothing really to cry over.

And having worked with EFTPOS terminals on a component level I can you it ain't pretty when a spike goes through.....I feel an EXTERNAL modem provides a nice bit of physical isolation......
Remember kiddies once the smoke escapes nothing works afterwards.

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danleff
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#20 Post by danleff »

So, this machine was built on a Xandros platform. Same thing as a system being built on a windows platform.

I probably would have had some fun with the salesperson and asked if it would run any distro of Linux. Most likely the uninformed salesperson would have said yes. If you asked if the modem was a hard modem, the person probably would have not known.

Otherwise you bought a system that worked out of the box as it was designed to do.

Unfortunate, but that's why one must do the research. Sorry for your troubles.
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Flash
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#21 Post by Flash »

Come on, guys; a flame war over Winmodems? :oops:

I realized that I can split a bunch of off-topic posts that are interleaved in a thread, into a whole new thread with nothing but them. Now your work can really stand out. :lol:

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