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04 March 2006
Posted in
ISP Web Host
If you want to know what the Mac Friendly section is all about, check out this page. You can also add provide information about your experiences by completing this form.
NZMac.com user 'Merlin' has submitted information related to the ISP company Xnet, an internet service and telecommunications provider. Whilst reports on the service the company provide are positive, Mac Friendly information on their website is inaccurate, badly worded or dated. Because of the fact the reports of the service are good and that they make some effort (used in its weakest sense) to support Mac users, Xnet receive a rating of 'Good'...just....with miles and miles of room for improvement.
RATING - GOOD
Merlin comments...
This is my current ISP. As an ISP they are (so far) great, with people answering phones instead of tortuous menus, and they were knowledgeable and helpful when Telecom stalled on setting up the 'behind the scenes' stuff for broadband for my number. I have not had to contact Xnet for Mac support yet, so cannot comment on this. They acknowledge the existence of Macs on their support page, and support Macs, with a list of the actual supported operating systems, browsers and email programs.
It is great the acknowledge Mac, but as Merlin points out, their first support page is littered with out of date or inappropriate information...talking of Operating systems "8.0+", "9.0+" and "OSS(10)"...terms that any Mac users would suggest shows an unfamiliarity with the software given the strange naming system they have used. At the same time, "IE 4.5 and above (MAC)" browsers are listed as the only supported Mac browser, which is both frightening (Internet Explorer 4.5 on the Mac came out how many years ago?) and out of date, given that Internet Explorer for the Mac is now officially dead.
It gets worse when viewing the list of supported email clients as the only Mac supported client "Outlook Express for Mac & PC" has never existed in OS X form. All evidence that these pages are exceptionally out of date and lacking in Mac knowledge.
The Helpful Software section lists no useful Mac programs at all and Merlin points out that pages on Phone Diallers and Viruses avoid comments that indicate that these issue are more of an issue for Windows users than Mac users. It's not until you get into the body of the page in viruses that you are indirectly informed (by comments about Windows) that perhaps this is only a PC issue. It always amazes me how many Help pages make assumptions about the people reading them to the point that simple reassurances or information are omitted.
Merlin sums it up well...
The 'Viruses'" section does not consider the Mac and assumes the user has Windows, as does the section on 'Phone Diallers'. Both of these are generally Windows-only problems, a fact which should be mentioned, along with any Mac issues and solutions.
The decision to rate Xnet as 'Good' is based on the fact they do acknowledge the Mac on some ares of their website and that Merlin does seem to be surfing the net and using his Mac with them OK. However, they are very close to receiving a 'Poor' rating because of how out of dated their information is and the fact that their terminology is also badly worded. I agree with Merlin that perhaps a true test will come when their Help Desk is connected with Mac related questions. Only time will tell.