Kinda speaks for itself, doesn’t it?
via Fake Steve Jobs
Archive for the 'Microsoft' Category
Four weeks ago tomorrow I contacted Microsoft about problems I was having with their OneCare product. I spent two hours on the phone (after trying to get it working for the previous two hours) with a Sam in tech support and we failed to get it working.
Sam had me uninstall Norton (which came installed on the computer but which I never setup). He had me download a tool to uninstall OneCare (!). I uninstalled and re-installed it 5-6 times during the call. Each uninstall or install requires a re-start of Vista, hence the length of the call.
Eventually Sam said he’d have to escalate the call and I’d be contacted by senior techs to get it resolved “within the hour”.
No-one called.
Until today that is, when Sam called back to see if everything had been resolved ok and could he close out the call!
After I told Sam that no-one had bothered calling back and the machine was still in the state we left it four weeks ago, he said sheepishly that he’d see what had happened and call me back “in 5 minutes”.
Well, we know that 1 hour in Microsoft Support time = at least 4 weeks in real time, so any bets on just how long their “5 minutes” really is?
Microsoft has released two significant fixes for Windows Vista today. One is a performance related fix and the other is a reliability related fix.
These fixes have to be manually applied for now although according to Mary Jo Foley:
Microsoft is promising to make the two new Vista fix packs available via Windows Update at a “later date.†The full statement, provided by a Microsoft spokeswoman:
“The two updates will be available on Microsoft’s download center today, and will be available through Windows Update at a later date.â€
I downloaded and applied these patches to my Vista machine this morning but I haven’t noticed any significant difference to it yet. Probably because I don’t use the machine that much because of Vista’s performance and reliability issues!!!
This is a step towards the release of Vista Service Pack one (SP1). This will be the point where Vista comes out of what most companies would call Alpha and goes to Beta-equivalent quality. As I have said previously, Vista won’t approach production quality, at least until it reaches SP2.
Tom’s on holidays, I’ll be your host for today. My name’s Frank P, you might remember me from such blogs as “BifSniff.comâ€,†FestivalShirts.net/blog†and “Aonach.com/chatterâ€.
Updated due to lateness of the hour when posting originally 
Well, despite being on holidays, Tom is not completely cut off from things technical - when I was talking to him today he had heard about the huge piracy bust in China today.
It seems Microsoft are chuffed with themselves for their part in the busting of two pirate software groups in China… the piracy groups were “in possession of illegal software with an “estimated retail value” of close to $500 million.”
“This case represents a milestone in the fight against software piracy—governments, law enforcement agencies and private companies working together with customers and software resellers to break up a massive international counterfeiting ring,” said Microsoft senior VP Brad Smith in a statement.
Lovely, says Tom, but if Microsoft really want to have done with people pirating their software Operating System they should just open source it.
Tom reckons battling piracy on a case by case basis like this is much like the little Dutch Boy sticking his finger in the dam - except in this case while the Dutch Boy celebrates, the dam is destined to burst in any case…
Open sourcing the software OS would indeed make pirating the software it redundant - if it’s freely available for a cost of zero, who’s going to go to the trouble of pirating it?
This is not the first time Tom has brought up the possible benefits to open sourcing for Microsoft.
Unfortunately, here’s where this post stops… this isn’t really my area of expertise, and Tom doesn’t have proper internet access going at the moment… this story really bugged him though, and while we were chatting about it, I said I’d get something up on his behalf - however I don’t know enough about the area to make a meaningful contribution.
I’m sure Tom will revisit on his return… but in the meantime, it’s over to you - what do you reckon? Should MS look at Open Sourcing their software OS? What would the benefits be? How would affect profits? How would any negative impact on profits be offset?
I look forward to being educated 
I have talked about what a piece of sh*t Windows Live OneCare is previously.
OneCare is Microsoft’s entry into the security arena. I have serious reservations about the ethics of Microsoft selling OneCare. It suddenly gives Microsoft a financial incentive to write buggy software. You can just imagine if, up to now, there was a financial dis-incentive for Microsoft to write buggy software and the quality of the software was poor just how bad the software will be now that they are selling OneCare.
That may go some way to explaining the many bugs in Vista!
Having said all that, I was contacted by Microsoft yesterday to tell me that they were sending me a new version of OneCare to install on the Vista laptop they sent me earlier this year.
I’ll give it another go, I said. Just to try it out and see how effective it is. Silly me.
I spent four hours today trying to get this piece of crap to work on the laptop. The last two of those four hours I was on to Microsoft tech support. They eventually gave up at 3:30pm and said they’d have to escalate it and I would get call back in an hour. That was eight hours ago. I’m still waiting for the call.
The number of re-starts required for this was completely ridiculous. It seemed like any time any change at all was made to OneCare, a re-start was required.
When nothing else worked, I had to uninstall Norton Internet Security. Restart required.
To install OneCare, if you have a previous version installed (working or not) you have to uninstall the previous version. To uninstall OneCare, you have to download something called OneCare Cleanup Tool! You find this out after you do a normal uninstall and it still doesn’t uninstall properly. Seriously! How bloody difficult would it have been to build the Cleanup Tool into the installer?
Even Microsoft don’t know what the errors OneCare throws up means. At one point I received the error “No plans available”
Of course, copying the error text and putting it into a search box on OneCare support yields the helpful answer “We did not find any results for ….”
Windows Live OneCare is unusable. Don’t even bother wasting your time trying it.
UPDATE: It is now 30 hours since Microsoft tech support told me they would ring me “in an hour” and still no-one has called me back.
Microsoft’s Windows Vista is a buggy product. Heck, even I found an unreported bug in it after playing with it for less than ten minutes!
I was talking to Microsoft folk in Madrid last week and I said to them that I couldn’t wait for Service Pack 2 for Vista to be released. Their response was - “You mean Service Pack 1?”
Nope, I meant Service Pack 2. Vista is so buggy that I don’t think Microsoft will address all the problems in their first Service Pack release. Like Windows XP, Vista will not be reliable until SP2.
The Microsoft guys weren’t impressed with my opinions of Vista!
It looks like SP1 is getting closer though. According to istartedsomething.com the Microsoft Downloads site had links to documentation for SP1 for OEMs - as of this writing the docs are still available.
Cool, now has anyone seen any sign of Vista Service Pack 2?
Recent Comments