No, it’s not DPR but only because that most of the members exercise tremendous amount of self-discipline and self-criticism when posting. CS88 was such a gigantic fluctuation in terms of noise-to-signal-ratio that is was way off scale, approaching the DPR noise level.
I think, jthurber and Arka did a great job by very politely pointing it out to him, thus restoring the great information quality of the FM forum. I think they should be thanked for that.
Dell is also history, becuase they used to offer good tech support, now it's been shipped to India and Pakistan unless you are a fortune 500 company. They used to make good computers at a cheap price, my local guy down the street builds them better and cheaper. Need I go on? For laptops you can look at HP/Compaq, IBM and Toshiba, the rest are doodoo except maybe for a Mac (I am a Windoze guy and can't comment on their stuff).
Unfortunately most companies peak then get chopped off at the knees by more agile competitors, there are very few GE's, MicroSoft, and IBM's of the world.
Dell has since re-thought the tech-support situation, and has brought that function back to the US. Other than political ramifications, I'm not sure which approach would bring better support. I've never called tech support for either of my Dell machines.
Gerry Szarek wrote:
Dell is also history, becuase they used to offer good tech support, now it's been shipped to India and Pakistan unless you are a fortune 500 company. They used to make good computers at a cheap price, my local guy down the street builds them better and cheaper. Need I go on? For laptops you can look at HP/Compaq, IBM and Toshiba, the rest are doodoo except maybe for a Mac (I am a Windoze guy and can't comment on their stuff).
Unfortunately most companies peak then get chopped off at the knees by more agile competitors, there are very few GE's, MicroSoft, and IBM's of the world.
I have to disagree with you on the state of Dell. Dell's been posting net profits for as long as I can remember now, and their computer sales show no sign of slowing down (at least not any more than everyone else.) I'm not a big fan of their systems either, but you can't deny they are doing well as a company, even in a crowded market.
As for the tech support issue, I am not really sure why so many people are bothered by the offshore centers. I've been sent to centers in Argentina, India, Singapore, and Taiwan, and the only time I had any trouble was in Taiwan, where the English is more or less indecipherable. In all other cases, my issues, some of which were fairly complex (Linksys routers, access points, Abit motherboards, etc etc) were resolved expediently and to my satisfaction. In fact, I've often been able to get faster and better answers from Linksys tech centers in Bangalore than I have from Apple support centers in Texas. And the Linksys operation is open 24 hours a day, versus Apple's 9-6 operation. I hardly think that the trend to offshore tech support is a sign that a company is about to take a fall. While some people may complain about the thicker accents, most people are happy enough to have their problems resolved, regardless of where on the planet it is solved.
I agree with Arka here. I have a Dell laptop and have used their tech support. It was fine and the person I got was in India. The nice thing it was 2AM my time. Basically they have support 24 hours a day and depending on the time you get a different place.
Bottomline, just because it is in another country doesn't make it bad. I manage a group of ASIC design engineers and only 40% are native US. My other employees are just as good as anybody else.
bouch wrote:
Arka, people are offended because they got layed off and had to train their foreign replacement in the weeks before they were shown the door!
Well, that reasoning is more emotional/political than it is real. Sure it would suck to have to train your replacements, but that's life. Upgrade or die; people have been doing it for a long time. A lot of my friends in the IT biz saw this coming and are going back to school to upgrade their careers, or switching careers entirely. They're not bitter about it; really, I think it's kind of childish to be. If you want to have access to foreign products and sell your own products overseas freely, you also need to be willing to think of labor as a product that has costs and benefits. As I see it, foreign workers can do the same job at times that American workers can't (2AM = Noon, in India), and can usually do it fairly well. Just because it might cost me my job does not necessarily mean they are not good at theirs. If there are specific examples to the contrary (and I am sure there are) I would love to hear them, but my own experiences have been overwhelmingly positive, so I have a hard time listening to the people who bellyache over this because of misplaced nationalism or bitterness at losing their work to a competitor overseas.
I'd be very interested in a link ( In French, German, Spanish or Dutch) -- English as well of course.
Chasseur D'images is usually the first to get snippets of info -- but please post your EOS 3D link -- or if it's gone due to a Non disclosure agreement or other problem then show us a screen grab.
As far as the other problems are concerened -- off shore call centres / devlopment etc is only a temporary phenomenon as in the end particularly for things like IT not only do the time zones make it difficult the cost is actually not that much cheaper if at all.
For example I've seen some large companies in the UK have been trying this -- and after a while what happens is that they have to hire "Contractors" for a high price that write "Technical Specs" for Off shore development that has to be coded in India / Malaysia etc.
Well the tech specs usually have to be written to such a detail that the UK contractor does everything except actually save the code on the computer.
The Malaysian centre types the stuff in (with loads of errors and in the end the fixes are done locally in the UK -- so the firm actually ends up paying TWICE for the same bit of code that could have been done locally in the UK much quicker.
Alos there is now a backlash -- customers want to be serviced in the UK -- Banks for example that outsource to India are losing customers in droves -- would you give your credit card number to some sweatshop in Bangalore -- No Fear. Even if these banks charge a bit more customers WILL pay for service and above all security,
Finally -- more relevant in Europe than the USA -- People are FED UP when going into Restaurants, Train stations, Bars etc etc and are bombarded with incessant Mobile phones ringing or people on computers -- Malaysia is 7 hrs differenf from Europe which also causes a problem for these type of operations.
YOU HAVE TO SWITCH OFF AT TIMES. That's what Quality of Life is all about and finally people are beginning to get it back again.
Frankly, I don't care where Dell's tech support people are. My issue is whether they are competent. I am reading posts about Dell tech support at the wrong time. I just spent 90 minutes on the phone with them with what should have been a simple question. I was transferred and put on hold 3 times. The last person with whom I spoke, clearly had no technical expertise at all and was trying to bluff knowledge. When she figured out that I was on to her, she put me on hold to "do some research". Forty five minutes later, when she had not come back, I realized that "doing research" was her way of ending the call. I have had at least 5 horrible experiences with Dell tech support in the last 2 years. While I realize that other big computer manufacturers may be not better than Dell with customer care or tech support, I'll let myself be upset with someone else after my next computer purchase instead of letting Dell do it to me another time. Since it is impossible to complain to a breathing, talking human being who cares at Dell, it feels good to get this off my chest now. Sorry.
Les
kyle wrote:
IAs far as the other problems are concerened -- off shore call centres / devlopment etc is only a temporary phenomenon as in the end particularly for things like IT not only do the time zones make it difficult the cost is actually not that much cheaper if at all.
For example I've seen some large companies in the UK have been trying this -- and after a while what happens is that they have to hire "Contractors" for a high price that write "Technical Specs" for Off shore development that has to be coded in India / Malaysia etc.
Well the tech specs usually have to be written to such a detail that the UK contractor does everything except actually save the code on the computer.
The Malaysian centre types the stuff in (with loads of errors and in the end the fixes are done locally in the UK -- so the firm actually ends up paying TWICE for the same bit of code that could have been done locally in the UK much quicker.
Alos there is now a backlash -- customers want to be serviced in the UK -- Banks for example that outsource to India are losing customers in droves -- would you give your credit card number to some sweatshop in Bangalore -- No Fear. Even if these banks charge a bit more customers WILL pay for service and above all security, ...Show more →
I can't agree with you on this point. It's a two way street. As problems are made clear, already the 'sweatshops' as you call them are working to make the process more efficient. From better QC to better English speaking, the offshore companies and their management are rapidly adapting to the needs of their Western clients. And they are hardly sweatshops in the traditional sense. While Indians, for example, are getting paid a lot less than they would in the UK, their standard of living and their purchasing power within India is considerable, and those salaries will only get better as more Western companies relocate production and call centers to South and Pacific rim Asia (Eastern Europe and South America are also becoming popular destinations.) English in India is now taught with various accents, with an emphasis on enunciation. More Indian programmers and scientists are graduating with advanced degrees, and strong foreign language skills. In fact, last year alone India had the largest number of science and engineering graduates in the world, followed closely by China, and then more distantly by the US. In fact, in the US, the number of PhD's issued has been stagnant for years, and many of those degrees are awarded to people who grew up outside the US. And we wonder why we are not able to effectively compete for work?
Governments are also getting in the act as they remove archaic restrictions on business and focus on revamping infrastructure to handle the new investment. Western customers are becoming demanding, and that's the backlash. But the people working abroad are aware that the quality of their services can improve, and they are working feverishly to do so. After a while, I think this process will mature, and we will see the labor market go completely global, with possible migrations of professionals in and out of countries that have lucrative job possibilities. Barring a major global event, such as a major war, I doubt we will see these types of jobs simply return the the countries that spawned the industries. After all, the UK started the industrial revolution, but China now produces more steel than most of Europe. Germany built the first cars, but now American and Japanese companies are larger than the German originators. The software revolution started in the US, but now that it is maturing, I think we'll see that most of the grunt work in software will be done in China and India.
lordarka wrote:
I can't agree with you on this point. It's a two way street. As problems are made clear, already the 'sweatshops' as you call them are working to make the process more efficient. From better QC to better English speaking, the offshore companies and their management are rapidly adapting to the needs of their Western clients. And they are hardly sweatshops in the traditional sense. While Indians, for example, are getting paid a lot less than they would in the UK, their standard of living and their purchasing power within India is considerable, and those salaries will only get better as more Western companies relocate production and call centers to South and Pacific rim Asia (Eastern Europe and South America are also becoming popular destinations.) .......Arka C....Show more →
I stll maintain that once the standards rise to their Western counterparts then there is no longer any advantage in having these service centres in far away places as wages will inevitably rise as the standard of living in these countries improves.
True "Grunt Work" will always be done in cheap countries -- eventually as China also reaches the Post Industrial stage then Africa will finally be the world's factory .
But in the "Post Industrial" world it's Quality of Service and hands on consultation that makes the money now and this can't be done using people 6,000 KM and 7 hrs away
It's pretty obvious you don't have a family or kids. When getting laid off means your wife & kids suffer, it becomes pretty important to you. It's not as simple as going back to school to upgrade your career when you don't have any health insurance for yourself or your family or any way to make mortgage or car payments. Misplaced naitonalism! How about I care more about my family than somebody else's halfway around the world? It's fine to make broad sweeping arguments but it becomes a little more emotional for you when getting laid off hits home.
It's pretty obvious you don't have a family or kids. When getting laid off means your wife & kids suffer, it becomes pretty important to you. It's not as simple as going back to school to upgrade your career when you don't have any health insurance for yourself or your family or any way to make mortgage or car payments. Misplaced naitonalism! How about I care more about my family than somebody else's halfway around the world? It's fine to make broad sweeping arguments but it becomes a little more emotional for you when getting laid off hits home.
Obviously not, but that changes nothing. I recently read a comment by one person who had family and kids who said that he would happily kill his foreign counterpart for taking his job. I don't care who you have to support and protect; that's misplaced anger. I also hear quite often that people feel indignation that they, as Americans, are not being hired by 'American' companies. (Some of these companies are contributing as much in taxes to foreign governments as they are to our own.) They want protectionist policies from our government to protect them from cheaper labor abroad. Well, I'm sure you've heard the corporate counterargument, which is a little more sustainable; there won't be any more companies to hire ANYONE if they can't compete fairly in an emerging global labor market. We've seen the effects of emotional protectionism before; India, which is at the center of a lot this controversy, suffered tremendously under socialist, protectionist systems designed to make life better for the people living there. And I can tell you many tragic personal stories from that country that make car payments and mortgages look like pretty minor concerns.
You can get as emotional as you like, but the fact remains that you need to compete for your job in the same way that you expect others to compete for your hard earned money. My dad was laid off once, and it was hard on us. He eventually needed to re-tool to enter the market place, and now he is secure again for a while, most likely 'till retirement. I admittedly have less to lose from a layoff, but if I had a family and children of my own, I would still not abase myself by reverting to this sort of defeatist rhetoric. Most IT people that I know were able to see how outsourcing might affect them and started to prepare themselves for possible changes BEFORE they lost their jobs. We make our own destiny, but spurious arguments based on anger and a false sense of entitlement lead nowhere.
As far as I see it, global capitalism is moving our own market in new directions while bringing millions of people in the rest of the world out of dire poverty. And we get cheaper products and more flexible services to boot. We can afford great camera equipment because of it, and we can assume that things will continue to improve in terms of technology because of it. I remember less than 20 years ago how people were using similar arguments to demonize the Japanese companies we now patronize for cars and cameras. Aren't you glad that the guys taking sledgehammers to Toyotas in the 80's didn't win that political battle?
India and China are today's new bogeymen. 20 years from now, it'll be someone else.
Just back to the 20D rumour I called Canon NZ and asked them what was being released this year, I was told that the 10D replacement is called the 20D and will be 8mp, the girl I spoke to didn't have a clue what crop factor meant so can't advise if it's 1.3 or 1.6. I was told that there are samples of the camera in NZ and release date was in October.
Mthorpe_Davies wrote:
Just back to the 20D rumour I called Canon NZ and asked them what was being released this year, I was told that the 10D replacement is called the 20D and will be 8mp, the girl I spoke to didn't have a clue what crop factor meant so can't advise if it's 1.3 or 1.6. I was told that there are samples of the camera in NZ and release date was in October.
You really don't need to say it when you really know it ... you just killed a wonderful thread I've really enjoyed.
