Where to find good/cheap tech support

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org wrote:
> Where would you all recommend that one can go to find good FreeBSD
> tech support that does not cost $150+ an hour?
>

Why are you so hung up on the billing rate?

Problems with Windows take much longer to fix than problems with
FreeBSD, so your going to end up paying the same total amount.

And if you rate your technical help solely by the amount of money
they charge you are destined to get cheap but poor help that will cost
more in the long run.  And that is true whether your talking about fixing
a computer or fixing a car.

>
> I am having a SCSI controller boot problem that no one seems to be
> able to help on

It is economically foolish to pay for 3 hours at $20 for a SCSI
controller
that costs $60.  If your having a booting problem then buy replacement
hardware.

> but I am also thinking of the future if there is an
> emergency and I can't afford to have a server down for days at a time.
>

If your business is that critical you should have a fully configured and
ready to go duplicate of your server, switched off and sitting next to
the
production one.  This is true no matter what the operating system in use.
And I've seen plenty of Windows server that took "days of time" to fix.

There is a saying "champagne taste on beer budget" perhaps you haven't
heard of it?

Ted