Ubuntu for Small Business

[Matthew Palmer]

On Sun, Sep 11, 2005 at 07:38:31PM +0200, Stephan Hermann wrote:
> On Sun, 2005-09-11 at 10:25 -0300, Derek Broughton wrote:
> > Stephan Hermann wrote:
> > >> No, I'm arguing that an IM tool has no place in business, except for the
> > >> odd help-desk situation - and there are better ways to do that too.
> > > 
> > > It depends on your working behaviour. Working with Exchange and emailing
> > > other people cost me more time, then to phone or write an instant
> > > message.
> > 
> > You're missing the point, I'm afraid.  I haven't the slightest doubt that
> > email is slower than phoning or sending an IM - for the initiator. 
> > However, every time you do that somebody else has to give up their time to
> > deal with you.  There are very, _very_, few businesses where I would
> > concede that's an appropriate use of time.  Email takes a little longer,
> > but it uses time more appropriately. 
> > 
> 
> As I said, it depends on the position. If you're working in operations
> you have to react fast and for this, email is sometimes to slow. Phone,
> cell or IM is much faster, and gives you the possibility to rais the
> attention from the engineers towards you.

You're contradicting yourself here.  You say here that the advantage of
phone/cell/IM is that you can interrupt someone else, but you said earlier
that you can mitigate the interruption downside of IM by ignoring it.

> > >> Emails are asynchronous.  Business or personal, they still eat time, but
> > >> they eat it when it's appropriate _for me_.
> > > 
> > > Same applies to IM..you decide when to answer and when you have time to
> > > answer.
> > 
> > It can, but imo there's an expectation among users that you'll respond.
> 
> So, personally I don't expect, that someone will answer me in time. Why?
> Because I think, when I'm busy, the other person can be busy too.

And at this point e-mail is going to be a far better option, because as I
understand it (from my quite limited experience with IM systems, mind) if
you shutdown your machine before you read and respond to the IM, it is lost. 
An e-mail lives in your inbox, getting in your way until you deal with it
(admittedly, the misspelt 'Deal' button on your keyboard doesn't seem to
solve the problem most of the time, but I'm sure that's a kernel bug).

And e-mail can be similarly interrupting to IM if you want it to be -- your
e-mail client can pop up an annoying dialog box telling you have new a new
message, in an astoundingly similar way to your IM client.

> So, during meetings, cell is off and IM stands on away, so everybody
> should know, that I can't respond.

So the problem with e-mail isn't that it is slow (which it sure as heck
ain't), but that it lacks a reliable method of presence notification?  That
explanation I can live with.

- Matt

-- 
"[the average computer user] has been served so poorly that he expects his
system to crash all the time, and we witness a massive worldwide
distribution of bug-ridden software for which we should be deeply ashamed."
		-- Edsger Dijkstra