sun mechanical mouse under 4.1.3U1 - summary?

From: Rob Allan (rob.e.allan@hydro.on.ca)
Date: Wed Nov 09 1994 - 00:18:04 CST


To recap: I ordered 2 mechanical mouse from sun express CANADA for some
sparcstations. I was given an order number and told that they would work
with type 4 & 5 keyboards and with solaris 1.X and 2.X.

When they came, neither would work properly, so I posted here to see if there
was an known problem/fix. After my this post, many people responded and told
me that their mice were working fine.

I called sunexpress CANADA to try and work the problem out. They told me to
call the sun 1-800 support line. I called them and explained the problem. They
said the mice were defective and sent me 2 new ones.

Well these ones didn't work either, so I knew something was really wrong.
I re-called sun support and after a few calls back & forth, my call was
escalated and a new support guy took over.

He told me that the mice I had were for the Voyager workstation. The mechanical
mice for the sun were only sold by sun express. They are logitech mice re-sold
by sun. They don't even have a sun part number. The sun express number is
SUNX-MOUSE.

Since they aren't sun parts, now I have to call sun express CANADA again and
get the right parts ...

So 3 weeks after ordering I have 4 voyager mice, which would be really nice if
I had a bunch of mouseless voyagers sitting in a closet somewhere.

Lessons learned:

Sun Express CANADA is useless. They don't even have a catalogue. I guess this
is how the person who gave me the order number screwed up. As far as the
sun support guy knows, the mouse they sent me isn't even in the US Sun Express
catalogue. BUT, since I am in Canada, I can't order from US sun express. They
don't even send us the catalogue, so we can't look up the order # ourselves.

I hate dealing with sun support. I just got through dealing with support hell
trying to get licenses for the C++ compiler when this problem started. Why are
people working for SUN support so eager to tell you something isn't their
responsibility and give you another number to call. When I call a company for
support, I want support. I don't care if you have to rocket to another planet
to help me. That's not my problem, it's sun's.
(I have had only good experiences with hardware support, I think they contract
that out.)

Workarounds:

I found out that there is a US Sun Express catalogue on-line on the Sun
web server. It even has a search function. Last night I did a search on the
word "mouse" and found the proper part number. (The voyager mouse wasn't
even in the catalogue.) So the solution is to find what you want on the
web server and then order it from Sun Express Canada.

Of course, the real workaround would be to get rid of the Canadian branch
and just let us order via the web server.

Sorry for the length of my rant, you should see the one I sent to our
sales rep :)

------
Rob Allan
Ontario Hydro
700 University Ave. H11 G26
Toronto, Ont. M5G 1X6
Tel. (416) 592 4195 Fax (416) 592 4966
EMail: Rob.E.Allan@hydro.on.ca



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