Actually, I
do embedded development work
for a living, I am currently working on a product using a PIC18 and planning on
selling several thousand units. Actually we are hoping for 10’s of
thousands….
Therefore
when I say that Microchip
support is not up to par I am talking about support I am getting in my daily
job, not as a hobbyist. Thus imagine going to your boss and saying “well
the project is delayed while Microchip sorts out this latest bug.”
To
put the support issues in perspective, last year we ended up redesigning a
product after 5 months of development to remove the Microchip processor and
replace it with a TI one due to the problems with support from Microchip. In
fact they told me I needed to purchase a demo board, then make my code run on
the demo board to demonstrate the problem I was having, other wise they could
not help me as they could not recreate the problem.
Even after
that experience I am still
working with Microchip on this product do to the fact that the silicon is a
perfect fit for the application, that is to do the same design with TI would
take 4 chips as compared to one PIC, again in quantities of a thousand this is
a big deal. I did have the foresight to do the development of this product
concurrently with two other projects such that I am not “twiddling my
thumbs” waiting on support from Microchip. But I will say that I make
every attempt to find an alternative to Microchips parts when ever I can because
of their poor tools and support.
From:
David W.S. King
[mailto:K...@Shaw.Ca]
Sent: Wednesday, August 18, 2004
4:46 PM
To: p...@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [piclist] Re:
Microchip sucks :-)
You have to
look at it from their point of
view. If one of those low life hobbyist types complains, they really can'
say
yes we'll
get on it
right away. It just isn't cost
effective for a few reasons, i.e. end user volume, if the error is actually on
their end or just
an error on
the end users part in
programming,setup etc. Think about how many thousands of bucks it is going to
cost in labour
and
materials to investigate any new
complaint. Is it worth that money to respond to one guy who uses a handful of
chips a year?
If on the
other hand they get a lot of the
same problems from multiple end-users, or someone who chews through 10's of
thousands
of pics a
year then that might be a
serious indication of something wrong and more likely to get a quick
response.
Honestly
I'd say Microchip is pretty good
on their support and caters quite well to hobbyist and small users.
I've
gone from
mooching al
the samples I could to being
able to order directs from them and can say there really isn't that great a
difference in treatment
I think the
point is Microchip does not
care about the users, so telling them what you like or dislike is a waste of
time.
I actually
was told that waiting 2 weeks
for Microchip to respond to a bug that stopped development was acceptable to
them. Don’t get me wrong there was no fix after 2 weeks rather after 2
weeks they responded and said they received the bug report and I would have to
wait a few more weeks for verification that the bug exists and then a few more
weeks for a possible fix.
Personally I
really like Microchip’s
silicon, but hate their development tools and support.
--- In
p...@yahoogroups.com, Chad Russel <chadrussel@y...>
wrote:
>
> --- Igor Janjatovic <kodrat@p...>
wrote:
> >
> > P.S.
> > There is online forum at microchip dot
com but it sucks :-))
> >
>
> ROFLMAO
>
> I am not volunteering, but in the past when
something important
enough
> and appropriate has come up here in the
group, I have called
Microchip
> and reported back. Being a local number
may help response time.
>
> And....they may already be here. You
never know. :-p
>
> Chad
>
>
I'm thinking that many manufactureres have an
idea
what goes on in
these lists.
I know we talked about samples some months ago and
the consensus was
that Maxim has a great sample offer, but getting
chips is too darn
hard.
I coppied sent customer support some of the texts
with the list URL
to tell them of some 'user
feedback'
But, not that you metnion it, we do get some posts
of 'read the data
sheet' or check out these app
notes......
not commenting or adding information, just
directing to official
documents.... I wonder....
But, yes, Microchip would be welcome and would get
a feel for what
the yahoo list is doing.
But, the other picklist is much larger and has
more traffic and is
unofficial as well. So it seems the
company people could have to
keep up with all the stuff going on or just
support it's official
base.
My suggestion is that if you don't like the
official list, tell them
and tell them why and tell them what you
want. Mention it here and
maybe others here will also talk about what they
want from that
list. They can't fix it if they
don't know
it's broken.
If you want official support, that is the
place.
Dave
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