Ask Slashdot: Do You Trust When a Vendor Tells You To Buy New Parts?

Nerval's Lobster writes "Roughly 85 percent of IT managers polled by Forrester said they would hold onto networking infrastructure longer, but vendors retire products prematurely in an effort to force customers to upgrade. In a response that may seem familiar to anyone who's ever been pressured into buying a maintenance contract—either by an enterprise vendor or a major electronics retailer—over 80 percent of the 304 respondents said they don't like the misrepresented cost savings, new fees, and inflexible pricing models—but buy the products anyway. One of the survey's interesting points is that IT decision makers aren't willing to contradict the vendor. The uncertainty seems to come from the fact that the vendor may in fact be right—and a customer who contradicts what they're saying may end up shouldering the blame if the equipment goes south. It's the 'you never got fired for buying IBM' argument, applied to the networking space. The problem, of course, is that the vendor often works for its own agenda. Do you upgrade when the vendor (or reseller) suggests you do so? Or do you stick to your own way of doing things?"

Re:Stop buying gear without lifetime warentee

[Anonymous Coward]

Lifetime warranty from Cisco doesn't mean for the lifetime of the piece of equipment. Quoth Cisco (from http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/general/warranty/English/LH2DEN__.html):

As long as the original End User continues to own or use the Product. In the event of discontinuance of product manufacture, Cisco warranty support is limited to five (5) years from the announcement of discontinuance.

Re:Related question

[zlives]

no but i do replace the ether fluid every 10k packets, and I do see the improvement in packet-loss numbers