[OPLINTECH] Questions about Ameritech

[Dan Will]

Chad/Patty,
   I noticed that their website shows only XP installs. I would be interested where they stand on Vista/Windows 7 (Windows 7 IMHO is much better than either XP or Vista).
You might (at least I would) think that a big "national" company would list Windows 7 as an option as well as a 5+ year old OS.
My $0.02 worth.   ;^)

Dan Will
Technology Supervisor
Meigs County District Public Library
willda at oplin.org
740.992.5813
740.992.6140 (fax)

The difference between fiction and reality?
Fiction has to make sense.
Tom Clancy



-----Original Message-----
From: oplintech-bounces at oplin.org [mailto:oplintech-bounces at oplin.org] On Behalf Of Chad Neeper
Sent: Monday, December 28, 2009 1:43 PM
To: oplintech at oplin.org
Subject: Re: [OPLINTECH] Questions about Ameritech

Welcome to the list, Patty.

I've not heard anything one way or another about Amerikit, however, I have a few relevant comments based on a quick perusal of their website. 
It looks like they are using good products to install and secure the computers. It looks like they are using Dell computers, which are usually pretty good computers, in my experience. They are also using Faronics products to protect public computers from changes. That's also a plus. It appears that they use workstation imaging. It's also probably somewhat safe to assume that, based on the apparent national scale of their company, they will have a fairly well-secured standardized core configuration for the public computers. (Meaning that it's probably not just a poorly-configured one-off basic installation with no customizations to correctly secure the computers...A configuration we see all to commonly with general tech companies that don't work regularly with libraries and schools.) In general, I'd be cautiously positive on the potential technical side. Definitely do what you're doing, though and try to find an actual customer to talk to before you commit.

On the downside:  The company is based in South Dakota. Even though they claim a network of over 4000 technicians available to them, you will probably never see an actual employee of the company, even for the initial install. They will be using a local company (probably several) that is (are) responding to specific service requests. In my own experience, years ago I used to work for a small 4-5 employee computer retail/repair store. We would, on occasion, receive a faxed service request from a large national service company. If it was a service request we felt we could handle, then we would respond to the fax saying essentially, "We'll do it." Our service guy (me, in some cases) would then visit the client and perform the required on-site task. We handled maybe 1-3 of these types of requests each month and we never visited the same client twice, so there was absolutely no continuity in service. It was also always the case that we never understood the whole picture and only had our little piece of the puzzle to work with. I hated those, but it was good paid service work.

To counter the "downside", it's quite possible that Ameritech make extensive use of remote control, which will help to limit the on-site requirements...Something else to ask of any Ameritech customers you get in touch with.

All-in-all, if you're ok with the likely case of no continuity in your on-site server techs (perhaps if you have your own tech-saavy person to handle stuff after the initial install), then from the looks of it, this company might have some good potential. I hope you can find some paying customers to talk with!

Chad

-----------------------
Chad Neeper
Senior Systems Engineer

740-548-8070 (voice)
866-214-6607 (fax)




Patty Brust wrote:
> I'm new to using this list so please execuse my mistakes. Our library 
> has been approached by Amerikit to provide the computers we will be 
> buying with Gates grant money.  Has anyone had any experience with 
> this company, I'm concerned about the support issue?  Any info will be appreciated.
>
> Patty Brust
> Jackson City Library
> Jackson, Ohio
> brustpa at oplin.org
>
>
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