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The best of Reader Comments: Acronym meltdown - take it easy on the ASP and the MPs
Each week silicon.com is inundated with comments from you, our readers. This week you show your compassionate side...

By editorial@silicon.com

Published: Friday 25 May 2001

ASPs have taken a real bashing lately and a survey by The User Group confirms a deep dissatisfaction with the service considered 'irrelevant'. Reader response, however, was slightly more generous. http://www.silicon.com/a44605

You know it makes sense
By Doug Kessler

ASP will be back - just under another name. It simply makes sense. The economies and benefits are obvious. But IT people are the world's most conservative. Give it a decade, plus.

Careful with the generalisations
By Brian Catt
Renting MS Office over the internet was never going to be a good idea.

However, professional service companies have delivered ASP services for years and they are a well-respected no-brainer at the enterprise level where there are serious budgets and TCO is properly understood.

Outsourcing in times of limited expertise and continuous innovation is a proven case already. The applications are either collaborative or actual processes - serious stuff. To extend the reach of such systems over public internet requires additional sophistication in network and security management not economically supportable across a global WAN by a customer's internal services.

There're asps and there are ASPs.

That's fine for major players
By Karen Challinor

But what about the non-corporates...

1.Who don't have broadband access and will wait for hours for applications to load?

2.Who can barely afford the price of the current set of applications without having to continuously fund its use?

3.Who don't want to be forced into the latest version of the software every time the ASP upgrades having to learn a new product again and again?

Earlier in the week silicon.com ran a story http://www.silicon.com/a44542 about MPs who are useless at responding to constituents' emails. You rallied to the support of your own parliamentary representatives.

My MP wrote back to me...
By John Samuel
Dr. Jenny Tonge has twice responded within 24 hours to e-mails sent to her over the last 18 months. Let's name the good ones too...

... and so does Widdie
By Christopher Quinton
I think you are being a little unkind about MPs. They are all rushing around like whirling dervishes, while the election is on. Timing their speed of response is hardly appropriate, if they are away from their offices, and out on the hustings.

I did email Ann Widdecombe, and was delighted to receive a response from her, the next day.

However, it is worth pointing out, for others like Christopher Quinn, that the MPs were emailed well in advance of the current round of electioneering mayhem.

But not so fast. We did also reserve praise for those MPs who pulled their weight in a top ten count down of the fastest responses. http://www.silicon.com/a44523

At your service&
By Forbes Cook
OK - there is no excuse for not responding to emails (and no excuse for not replying to them either). However, assessing their email effectiveness in minutes or hours to respond is hardly an appropriate measure.

We don't want MPs to be just email typists, they ought to have serious work to do.

4, 8, 24 or even 48 hours should be fine as a 'real' response time and if they consistently beat that then they are playing with their computers too much and should get voted out of office.

...or maybe not
By Nick Critchlow

It is difficult to be helpful to Ministers by sending ideas:
Education Secretary: You are not allowed to speak to Mr Blunkett's office unless you are known to them!

The Culture secretary's office is closed from 12.00pm to 14.30pm for lunch - no messages taken. He is responsible for tourism, which is apparently in crisis. You would never guess!

How do we contact these people or are they all on the Gravy Train?

But what about the corporates?
By Janice Williamson

Having contacted a number of companies (thanks Microsoft!) by email in the past and not received a reply, never mind an acknowledgement, I must say I am not surprised at the lack of response from MPs. After all the culture of an organisation, or a country, is very often in line with those 'at the top'!

Why don't you put your MP to the test and let us know how you get on. As always, keep the comments coming.