Expert suggestions

"Being an IBM product, software XYZ is very sturdy...
Being an IBM product, software XYX is better than software ZZZ...."

The comments were made in a training session, where the trainer was passing on the wisdom. The trainer has never worked deep enough to make these comments. In fact she doesnt know any coding. And her overall experience in both products - read- restarting the server etc - is six months. She's even against writing a simple automation script to bring a web server back in case it goes down somehow, saying that it is too complicated to automate. That, when we are thinking on using some Machine Learning stuff to automate software maintenance! In fact product XYZ is the crappiest product IBM made, its almost in Beta. So complicated, built on Java/Eclipse and heavy (like most IBM softwares) and buggy and without any documentation. And XYX is way worse than ZZZ. Bah!!

Someone else: AVG (free version!) is way better than Norton(corporate, paid). I took the advice and installed AVG, and it was almost waste. I mean, so heavy, not so well designed, catching non-viruses, not catching viruses, making system slow etc. Now, yesterday another person making the same suggestion!!

I took Mechanical Engg. for B. Tech on such "expert advice" and fully regretted it later. The suggestion was - IT Boom is bust, IT has no future, computer engineers are starving these days, mechanical is the boom area now, etc. My ass.

So, be wary of the "expert comments" and suggestions you receive, when you ask for the best airline, best laptop, best software, where to join for engineering, which subject to take, will CFL give the same amt of light as much as tubelight (personal experience!) etc. No harm in listening, but one must realize that these may not "expert" at all!! Many of them are silly personal biases with no other basis whatsover.