Subject: SGI systems maintenance suppliers

From: [email-masked] (M. Nicklaus)
Date: Thu, 11 Aug 94 15:20:31 -0400

Dear Net-Workers,

Like many of you out there, we are running our computational chemistry
software on Silicon Graphics workstations.  Since the Technical Support
we have received from SG over the years has been slow, cumbersome and
bureaucratic at times (even when on a Maintenance Contract), we are 
looking for alternatives.  Two third-party suppliers of maintenance for
SG systems that we have heard of (no endorsement implied) are Great
Eastern Technologies and Halifax.
   We'd like to ask everyone about their experience with those two, or
any other, companies supplying hardware and/or software maintenance for
SG systems.  Specifically, we would like to know:
- What were the response times?
- How useful were the answers given (for phone support)?
- How unbureaucratic was the access to tech. support?
- Was the on-site support (if included) satisfactory?
- How would you rate the value of the service compared to the one 
  provided by SG?

   Please answer to me directly.  I will summarize to the Net (only)
if I am being explicitly asked to do so.  Thanks in advance to
everyone.

Marc

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 Marc C. Nicklaus                        Lab. of Medicinal Chemistry
 e-mail: [email-masked]               National Cancer Institute, NIH
 Phone:  (301) 402-3111                  Bldg 37, Rm 5B29
 Fax:    (301) 496-5839                  BETHESDA, MD 20892-4255
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