Suppliers' Websites

If ever an application crashes on Windows, I never hit the button to send information about it to Microsoft. I guess I was conditioned in the futility of attempting to engage Microsoft Support over 15 years ago. Ever since I haven't bothered with them. There is only so much hitting your head against a brick wall that is good for you after all. That said in this age of the Internet the resources provided on Microsoft's website are pretty good. Even the things that I might want to see might be there. If only I could find them.

I remember possibly 10 years ago, a colleague slamming the phone receiver down in frustration after talking to IBM when trying to get a licence for some software we had purchased. I took over and finally got a licence. I wasn't completely sure it was "our" licence, but it was a licence and it worked and we were able to move on. Even after its recent re-vamp - actually I'm sure that it is probably a continuous process in play here - it is still damn difficult to find what you really want. Try and use the IBM search for the bios update for a specific server, e.g. a x346. The results will list just about any IBM server.

The solution?

Just use Google. We all know it makes sense. I just wish for a higher signal to noise ratio. But no matter how bad it is, its still better than trying to use these two Vendors own search engines.