Cox and email revisited

On Jan 31, 2004, at 5:57 PM, Craig White wrote:

> Lastly, Win 95 is a Microsoft product and they will support it - they
> also support Macs

I'm not making this up - This is right from their site:
"MAC REQUIREMENTS:
CPU: PowerPC 601 (603 or higher preferred)
RAM: 32MB
Operating System: Windows 98, ME Windows, NT 4.0, 2000 or XP
Available Disk Space: 150MB
Input Device: CD-ROM"

Assuming that the site is wrong though, and that they actually do
support Macs running MacOS, it raises a question about how they can do
that without also supporting Linux. It's not *that* different.

> - they would support Linux if they figured that it
> wasn't an insignificant number. As for running Linux on even just a
> router, I'm quite certain that the mix of FreeBSD & Linux appliances
> sold as DSL/Cable Modem Sharing router devices by the various brands
> constitutes a significant market share and they won't support those
> either. But they NEVER offer help on basic networking issues - they
> only
> go to the point where they will get ONE computer online. Networking,
> routing, miscellaneous devices are simply the customers responsibility
> and I think quite rightly.

I think Craig has hit the nail on the head here. Support for anything
other than the consumer applications, email, the web and file transfer,
is just not something that Cox wants to do. That's a valid business
decision or at least it would be if there was competition in the cable
ISP business. Since there doesn't appear to be, the issue is more
complicated. But at a first approximation Craig is probably right. They
shouldn't be providing services that most of their customers will never
need under the basic rate.