OESF Portables Forum
General Forums => General Discussion => Topic started by: Codefire on March 03, 2004, 12:20:23 pm
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DATE/TIME SENT
3/3/2004 11:43:19 AM
EMAIL HOW WOULD YOU PREFER TO BE CONTACTED
codefire.geo@yahoo.com Email
PRODUCT SELECTION MODEL NUMBER SERIAL NUMBER
Zaurus (SL Series) SL-6000
COMMENT
I would like to know if there is a solid release date for this line and
if so when is it.
Thank you for your time,
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Thank you for contacting Sharp Electronics Corporation.
Unfortunately we have no estimated time frame for this unit to be
released. We do not even have access to the specifications for this
unit either.
We appreciate the opportunity to provide you with this information.
If you need additional information include all information from prior e-mail
messages and replies.
Diane Habas
Customer Assistance Center
Technical Support Specialist
Technical Support Line: 877-794-8675
Fax: 630-378-9981
Accessories: 800-BE-SHARP
Email: zaurussupport@sharpsec.com
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\"Unfortunately we have no estimated time frame for this unit to be
released. We do not even have access to the specifications for this
unit either. \"
What !!!, while the rest of the world is already aware of the specs (as published on Brighthand and elsewhere) Sharp still has to parrot the same line about how its left hand doesnt know what its right hand is doing ?
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Makes one wonder how tha SL-6000 manual submitted itself to the FCC?
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Well, I knew a guy in Sharp UK who had a C700... he had to import it himself as Sharp wouldn\'t let him get one internally, instead insisting that for a company supplied PDA he could have a 5500 or a... Palm!
Not as bad as the sales guys at one event I attended who all had a 5500 around their neck on a strap, and no idea at all of how they worked I think I saw one switched on and in use the whole time.
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Think I should e-mail them a copy of the PDF the FCC posted back to them? It might help them with the specs. =]
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The reason they know nothing of the product is because the person who replied is from their Tech Support Department. They, like in all companies, generally know nothing.
bigj
\"Unfortunately we have no estimated time frame for this unit to be
released. We do not even have access to the specifications for this
unit either. \"
What !!!, while the rest of the world is already aware of the specs (as published on Brighthand and elsewhere) Sharp still has to parrot the same line about how its left hand doesnt know what its right hand is doing ?
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it\'s easier to say you know nothing... and to do nothing... than to try.
people are lazy.
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The real problem is that most customer service organizations use \"average call time\" as a major factor in performance reviews and promotions. People who try too hard end up taking too long and get pushed out eventually, where the people who are adept at getting customers off the phone get promoted so the situation is self-reinforcing. There was a great article about this on Salon.com recently.
If upper manager types actually cared about customer service, the techs in the trenches would be happy to provide it.
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You contacted the wrong department. Why would technical support need access to information about a product that has not been released? There is absolutely no reason. You people shouldn\'t get so bent out of shape claiming they do not know their right hand from their left. Sharp is a huge company and most likely a majority, if not all, development is handled in Japan. So when you contact an American technical support agent you get irritated because they don\'t know. The company is too huge to relay such vasts amounts of information among ALL its employees. Personally, I find it highly annoying when people ask the WRONG person and become angry simply because they didn\'t receive the information they wanted. Next time it would be wise to contact the CORRECT department before inquiring.
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You have GOT to be kidding! When I worked tech support, we had to get trained in new releases BEFORE customers got them, not at the same time as customers! I can\'t believe a major company would wait until the product is in stores to BEGIN training tech support in it. Tech support should minimally be alpha testers, or early customers would inevitably be frustrated. Oh, wait, this is Sharp. I forgot. Nevermind.
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Sharp has already said that the 6000 will only be released to enterprise customers in the US, so it\'s quite conceivable that the tech support Codefire got through to has nothing to do with that line of support. Besides which we haven\'t had any firm release date for the 6000 in the US and it still could be months away. Maybe the delay is because they\'re still training their support staff
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No, I am not kidding zorg. Surely you realize that absolutely no technical support staff would be trained on a product which has not even been assigned a release date. Since there is no release date set on the 6000, then why would technical support be trained? Exactly how would it benefit Sharp to train it\'s support staff on a product they aren\'t even sure when they will release? It could be many months from now and, in that period of time, their staff will simply forget this information due to the \"you don\'t use it, you lose it\" rule. And exactly how is it beneficial to have technical support be beta testers? They are paid to provide support, not try and break things. They pay other people to do that and those people are the ones who know much better ways to break things and are capable of properly documenting the situation. Training technical support on a product which has no release date set is like putting the cart before the horse. Sure, it\'s very possible for the horse to push the cart but I wouldn\'t suggest it and neither would the horse. In this sense, the technical support staff would also become extremely irritated. Especially if Sharp changed it\'s mind and said they weren\'t going to release it inside the USA. That would REALLY annoy the technical support people not to mention waste a good bit of money and time in the process. When Sharp decides on a release date it\'s not going to be the day after tomorrow, they\'ll give themselves time to properly train their staff on the product. This means when they decide it\'ll most likely be a few months from when they tell us. But, as you say, perhaps it is better to have the Japanese engineers tell the American technical support staff all about the product six months ahead of time so by the time the product actually arrives it has changed in some form or fashion which nullifies previous support training.
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Do you know something we don\'t :wink: ie the release is going to be months away.
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Gonna get flamed for this..
but I really dont like the 6000, it\'s ugly IMHO, the 700 series is much more attractive.
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Well thats a different issue altogether...
The fact is that Sharp doest seem to have any response to the release or news about the SL-6000 as yet (in case you have been following the thread till now), while the press release for the\" impending release \" was released in Novenmber last year.
And dear guest you might get flamed for posting subjects which are totallky unrelated to the thread in whcih you post.
Gonna get flamed for this..
but I really dont like the 6000, it\'s ugly IMHO, the 700 series is much more attractive.
So.... ???
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Sharp has given the release date for the USA as Q1 2004. (They didn\'t ever give a USA release date for the SL-C7XX, so it\'s not a good comparison.) They\'ve given the manual for the SL-6000 to the FCC. They\'ve given actual SL-6000s to IBM employees who showed them (on demand only) at Linuxworld. You can read IBM\'s SL-6000 \"Success Story\" about what they\'ve achieved with the SL-6000 at
http://www-306.ibm.com/software/success/cs...nDocument&Site= (http://www-306.ibm.com/software/success/cssdb.nsf/CS/CGES-5W22JF?OpenDocument&Site=)
You can find the SL-6000 listed at http://www.dealtime.com (http://www.dealtime.com) already (http://www.shopping.com) with product ID and other prerelease details.
Given all this info, \"6 months\" is not a very good release estimate. Predicting the future is always risky, but there is ample reason to believe that the product exists in some quantity already and that the manufacturing capability is in place for more.
Sharp missed its Japanese introduction dates for the SL-6000 by about a month and a half, judging by reports on blogs of Japanese users acquiring them about a month and a half after the announced release date.
Anything could happen. Mahwah, NJ could be swallowed by an earthquake. Monkeys could fly out of your butt. Sharp Tech Support USA could return from Spring Break recharged. Who knows? But the best estimate right now based on existing info is that the SL-6000 will be released in the USA WITHIN THE NEXT MONTH.
Sharp Tech Support should know about it. The fact that someone in Tech Support doesn\'t, could mean that they\'re an idiot, or that they\'re told not to say anything, or they\'re frustrated and wanting to quit, or they\'re having a bad day, or they just got back from maternity leave and aren\'t up to speed on new stuff, or they\'re getting so much spam in their mail they accidentally deleted the one message telling about it, or it could mean nothing. But it DEFINITELY don\'t mean that the SL-6000 is just a twinkle in somebody\'s eye for eventual delivery in a future epoch.