I am looking after an alternative for various Lantronix Xport products and found the Digi stuff. But looking in these support forums seems to indicate that overall support reaction times are not very convincing, with a lot of zero-replies-threads.
Any comments from end users about their satisfaction level regarding support quality and assistance?
Kind regards,
Heiko
Heiko,
The Support Forum landing page states the following:
The message board is intended for peer to peer support for Digi’s customers. Digi does not guarantee a response to posted questions. For timley support assistance please contact us at http://www.digi.com/support/eservice/eservicelogin.jsp. Digi reserves the right to delete or edit any postings with inappropriate content or material.
While we do make an effort to respond to postings on this forum, we do not always have sufficient time to do so.
If you need technical assistance please submit your request via the aforementioned URL or call us at +1 (952) 912-3456.
Cameron
Digi does get back to you, just not real quickly because there are not a lot of people there that support development on the me/wi-me products. The problem that we’ve run into is more with the lack of source code to things like the two vastly different web servers and the slightly modified openssl code. The Webservers seem to be supplied by a completely different entity.
–Troy
Support varies, depending on the political suituation at Digi (which is ever changing). When things are going well, I get answers within hours for basic things; when things are heating up (lots of layoffs), it can take days. It is a corporation with all the inherent problems.
Cameron tries to help out here, but he and 1 or 2 of his co-workers are the only ones who actually understand what is going on with the Connect parts, everyone else just quotes the knowledge base.
The level of forum support also changed dramatically when the ConnectME v2 came out about a year and a half ago. A lot of queries are not answered any more, even with a “I don’t know”. You see that there is a lot of zero reply threads here.
This may be because the queries have moved away from the NetOS programming questions which are what forum peer members like me can help with. I used to be able to help with almost every question, but I cannot help with all the new pre-built stuff (I use the API and write my own server). I still try to answer whatever I can, but my responses have gone from 10 a week to 2-3 a month.
As for calling Digi and talking to them, unless you get Cameron or one of the others who understand the part, you are out of luck, and because they actually know what they are doing, they are constantly out of the office putting out fires and so are almost impossible to get a hold of. I hope that Digi pays them enough - if they ever left, the Connect series of parts would die within 6 months.
The ConnectME is a wonderfully powerful part (with the exception of a poor serial interface to the hardware) that can solve a lot of problems, but I would give support a 4 out of 10. They try, but the corporation doesn’t give them much by the way of internal resources to work with. If you are looking for a solution for your app, it will probably do the trick, but don’t count on a ton of outside help.
-Erik
Hi Cameron,
It’s true, the support assistance answer quickly and is very usefull. I understand that you have not the time to answer all the questions. However the question of one developper can interest the others, so if you answer through the forum it would be more efficient than to answer to only one!
On the other hand, the range of applications is large, so it is very difficult for a developper to answer to an other one, because the same problem has not often been met before.
Paul
> Digi does get back to you, just not real quickly …
Really, I haven’t got a response to any of my support request emails/submissions. Just the acknowledgement message, nothing more. One from 12/12/2005 and another from 06/15/2006.
I really need some help with the limitations of the SSL client (not authenticating the host - first request) and with ADDP (second request), but so far, not a peep.
I’ve dealt with Lantronix in the past, and am not going back. Still, it would be nice to get at least an “I feel your pain, but we aren’t going to do anything” message rather than no response at all.