Well Lookie Here, Barracuda Networks tries to get me to fall into their trap again...

[mike at mtcc.com (Michael Thomas)]

On 12/22/2011 11:07 AM, Jon Lewis wrote:
> On Thu, 22 Dec 2011, Michael Thomas wrote:
>
>> At that point why should they sell iron at all? Seems like you get
>> all of the downside of owning the iron, and all of the downside of
>> paying for a cloud based service. Either you own what you own,
>> or you pay for service that somebody else provides. This "you
>> bought useless hardware unless you pay up" is really what's
>> infuriating.
>
> Presumably, Barracuda's hardware is i386/i686 compatible commodity parts. It's probably not at all "useless".  Just attach a USB DVD drive or USB flash drive, wipe the disk(s) and install your favorite Linux distro.
> It may take some doing to get all/most of the features Barracuda provides setup on your own...but if you don't have the time/expertise to do it, that's why companies like Barracuda exist.

If the spam filter stop working, it's presumably a pretty useless thing
as a... spam filtering device which is presumably why most people are
buying barracuda boxen. I suppose my larger point is that this is why
companies like postini exist. At least there you know that if you don't
pay the bill, mail stops flowing altogether much like any other service.
It's this "I paid for the hardware, but I don't really own what I paid for"
state that seems to stick in people's craw. Or maybe if they just leased
the box it would be more clear what their business model was.

Mike