oh, alright
Following on from what mr wittyname says

If a company resells a product and you have problem, guess what they're going to supply you. The *good* companies will tell you their product won't work in your environment.

Sod the best technical solution - the one that mostly works with minimum support load wins every time. If a high tech solution is used, you have to have multiple expensive people that know how to create and use it. Support is a killer as it gathers no revenue.

We'll sell you products to assess and monitor your users, at the same time as not wanting to be monitored ourselves.

Operating systems, service packs and drivers are released in beta prior to being formally released. Companies are supposed to test against these, so that their product works on release to consumers. Practically no one ever does, even the big companies.

Yes, we do call you names when you want changes from the specification at short notice, or no cost.

We will occasionally ask you for information we probably already know the answer to, just to give us breathing space.

Take the piss with your requirements, and watch your support charges rise the following year.

Year 2000 compliance was, surprisingly, not a scam except at the bottom end of the market.

No one optimises software any more, because hardware is becoming faster. Only the worst issues are fixed. If you 'upgrade' on the same hardware, it will normally be slower.

Never, ever, believe promises about support unless you have a signed contract.

Buying higher priced hardware and software (usually) provides better ongoing support. Don't buy a 5 quid chinese copy and expect the hardware to work after the next service pack, let alone the operating system.

Lots of hardware is produced by one manufacturer and rebadged by other companies. You pay for service and embedded software. It may be possibly to move embedded software from one device to another and save yourself cash..

Most overclocking talk is utter crap. It's all situation dependent and tall talk, and if you get it wrong, it will shorten component lifespan.

Don't, FFS, buy from PC World unless it's an emergency. It's cheaper to buy from Scan/Dabs/insight/whoever.

Oh, and we don't like being asked about which PC to buy because a) we have a life and don't always follow the market and b) even when we do tell people, they go out and buy a cheap piece of crap instead.
(EssY, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 17:27, Reply)