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Guest · Posted: Sun Jul 27, 2008 3:49 am Post subject: Microsoft tries to polish a turd

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8Bit

Microsoft Tries to Polish Vista By Saul Hansell

Microsoft is really taking the gloves off this time.
ZDNet is reporting that it will spend $500 million to
make a powerful statement to its hundreds of millions
of customers. I imagine the statement would have to go
something like this:

"Windows Vista isn’t really as bad as they say.
Honest. Please don’t be mad at us. We promise our next
operating system will be better. Pinky swear."

Those aren’t exactly the words they use, but it is
certainly the tone of the ad that Microsoft has started
running on its site. I can’t find it, but Ed Bott at
ZDNet did and has a copy here. It shows a painting of a
tall ship with the headline “At one point everyone
thought the Earth was flat. Get the facts about Windows
Vista.”

That promotion leads to a page that acknowledges that
Vista had problems:

"But we know a few of you were disappointed by your
early encounter. Printers didn’t work. Games felt
sluggish. You told us—loudly at times—that the latest
Windows wasn’t always living up to your high
expectations for a Microsoft product."

It takes a minute to figure out where to find
Microsoft’s response to this criticism: You need to
click some arrows on the page. (Why can’t Microsoft use
the plus Icon popularized by Google and lots of
others?)

The company asserts that it is now compatible with the
vast bulk of software and hardware. It also boasts that
Vista is more secure, faster, uses less energy and is
even “sexier.”

"Sure, Windows Vista gets a lot of compliments on its
aesthetics. But its style serves an important purpose:
to put everything within a click’s reach and make you
more productive."

Microsoft, is probably right that Vista gets a bit of a
bum rap. Lots of people find that Vista works fine and
is an improvement over Windows XP. I use Vista on a
home computer with little trouble. (And no, I don’t
hate Microsoft, despite what some commenters say. I am
a big fan of Word 2007, and I even pay for Microsoft’s
OneCare anti-virus and backup software.)

But this is still a dreadful place for Microsoft to be.
It is fighting Google on one side and Apple on the
other. And both of those companies have flaws, products
that don’t quite work right, have gaps and disappoint
users. But both Google and Apple have products that you
don’t need to be told to notice they are sexy. That
changes how people see the more prosaic parts of their
product lines and makes people far more open to
considering new products.

Even if you are a big fan of Microsoft, consider which
you would rather read about first: a something new from
Google, Apple or Microsoft?

After spending $500 million, Microsoft might be able to
convince people that Windows Vista is not awful. But
just because you can show the earth is not flat,
doesn’t mean you will rule the new world.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/22/microsoft-tries-to-polish-vista/?ref=technology

Martin Griffith · Guest

On Sat, 26 Jul 2008 22:49:10 +0000, in sci.electronics.design
invalid@example.com wrote:

[quote]
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8Bit

oops, fell asleep, sorry[/quote]

martin

Dirk Bruere at NeoPax · Guest

invalid@example.com wrote:
[quote]Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8Bit

Microsoft Tries to Polish Vista By Saul Hansell

Microsoft is really taking the gloves off this time.
ZDNet is reporting that it will spend $500 million to
make a powerful statement to its hundreds of millions
of customers. I imagine the statement would have to go
something like this:

"Windows Vista isn’t really as bad as they say.
Honest. Please don’t be mad at us. We promise our next
operating system will be better. Pinky swear."

Those aren’t exactly the words they use, but it is
certainly the tone of the ad that Microsoft has started
running on its site. I can’t find it, but Ed Bott at
ZDNet did and has a copy here. It shows a painting of a
tall ship with the headline “At one point everyone
thought the Earth was flat. Get the facts about Windows
Vista.”

That promotion leads to a page that acknowledges that
Vista had problems:

"But we know a few of you were disappointed by your
early encounter. Printers didn’t work. Games felt
sluggish. You told us—loudly at times—that the latest
Windows wasn’t always living up to your high
expectations for a Microsoft product."

It takes a minute to figure out where to find
Microsoft’s response to this criticism: You need to
click some arrows on the page. (Why can’t Microsoft use
the plus Icon popularized by Google and lots of
others?)

The company asserts that it is now compatible with the
vast bulk of software and hardware. It also boasts that
Vista is more secure, faster, uses less energy and is
even “sexier.”

"Sure, Windows Vista gets a lot of compliments on its
aesthetics. But its style serves an important purpose:
to put everything within a click’s reach and make you
more productive."

Microsoft, is probably right that Vista gets a bit of a
bum rap. Lots of people find that Vista works fine and
is an improvement over Windows XP. I use Vista on a
home computer with little trouble. (And no, I don’t
hate Microsoft, despite what some commenters say. I am
a big fan of Word 2007, and I even pay for Microsoft’s
OneCare anti-virus and backup software.)

But this is still a dreadful place for Microsoft to be.
It is fighting Google on one side and Apple on the
other. And both of those companies have flaws, products
that don’t quite work right, have gaps and disappoint
users. But both Google and Apple have products that you
don’t need to be told to notice they are sexy. That
changes how people see the more prosaic parts of their
product lines and makes people far more open to
considering new products.

Even if you are a big fan of Microsoft, consider which
you would rather read about first: a something new from
Google, Apple or Microsoft?

After spending $500 million, Microsoft might be able to
convince people that Windows Vista is not awful. But
just because you can show the earth is not flat,
doesn’t mean you will rule the new world.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/22/microsoft-tries-to-polish-vista/?ref=technology

[/quote]
Vista is an ME re-run.
From the users POV the best thing they could do is not release the next
OS until they get it right. REALLY get it right.

--
Dirk

http://www.transcendence.me.uk/ - Transcendence UK
http://www.theconsensus.org/ - A UK political party
http://www.onetribe.me.uk/wordpress/?cat=5 - Our podcasts on weird stuff

Guest

Dirk Bruere at NeoPax <dirk.bruere@gmail.com> wrote:

[quote]Vista is an ME re-run.
From the users POV the best thing they could do is not release the next
OS until they get it right. REALLY get it right.
[/quote]
Screenshots of the 25 worst moments when windows fails:

http://www.wackyarchives.com/featured/25-worst-moments-when-windows-fail.html

Tim Williams · Guest

"John Larkin" <jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in message
news:mtrn84p5jr2vbcnmjqkrngfo7au2qbahgc@4ax.com...
[quote]IE, Outlook, and any other Microsoft products should not be allowed
anywhere near a tcp/ip port.
[/quote]
Now, I find them quite sufficient. I challenge you to scan my computer and
find a virus.

Tim

--
Deep Friar: a very philosophical monk.
Website: http://webpages.charter.net/dawill/tmoranwms

John Larkin · Guest

On Sat, 26 Jul 2008 22:49:10 +0000, invalid@example.com wrote:

[quote]"But we know a few of you were disappointed by your
early encounter. Printers didn’t work. Games felt
sluggish. You told us—loudly at times—that the latest
Windows wasn’t always living up to your high
expectations for a Microsoft product."
[/quote]
High expectations of Microsoft products? Somebody has those?

XP is good enough that they should leave it alone. Vista is trying to
mimic the Apple OS, but without the programming skills.

Word is an astounding POS.

IE, Outlook, and any other Microsoft products should not be allowed
anywhere near a tcp/ip port.

Their self-flattering prose is, as usual, disgusting.

John

Paul Hovnanian P.E. · Guest

Dirk Bruere at NeoPax wrote:
[quote]
[snip]

Vista is an ME re-run.
From the users POV the best thing they could do is not release the next
OS until they get it right. REALLY get it right.
[/quote]
How many chances do they get? Remember how long they worked on Longhorn
(Longwait)? And when marketing started to kick ass and demand a release,
they started stripping out promised features (Shorthorn)?

--
Paul Hovnanian mailto:Paul@Hovnanian.com
------------------------------------------------------------------
Error: Keyboard not attached. Press F1 to continue.

Jeff Liebermann · Guest

On Sat, 26 Jul 2008 23:52:10 -0500, "Tim Williams"
<tmoranwms@charter.net> wrote:

[quote]Now, I find them quite sufficient. I challenge you to scan my computer and
find a virus.
Tim
[/quote]
I recently setup a brand new Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop for a customer.
It came with Vista. I updated it to the latest and installed AOL
9.0VR (downloaded from the AOL web pile). When I ran a full scan
using Avast 4.2, it found 2 or 3 "virusus" in the AOL installation
files. They were probably false alarms, but who knows.

Anyway, you don>t need a real virus to find a virus on your computer.

--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

Jeff Liebermann · Guest

On Sun, 27 Jul 2008 00:40:54 +0100, Dirk Bruere at NeoPax
<dirk.bruere@gmail.com> wrote:
[quote]From the users POV the best thing they could do is not release the next
OS until they get it right. REALLY get it right.
[/quote]
That won>t happen. Users only buy upgrades in the vain hope that the
next release will fix the bugs of the current version. Of course that
never happens because features and functions are added faster than
bugs get fixed. There>s always hope, but it never seems to happen.

If Microsoft actually did release something that was bug free, nobody
would upgrade to subsequent versions, resulting in a predictable
revenue loss. Therefore, it is beneficial to Microsoft (and other
software vendors) to intentionally leave a few major bugs in their
current products.

How it works:

1. It takes 18 months from initial release for a major software
product to be worth buying. Microsoft seems to take a bit longer at
about 24 months.

2. Subsequent upgrades add bloat, fix a few old bugs, add more bugs,
slow down the machine, and require additional RAM and diskspace.

3. After about 3-5 years, the products usually stabilize into a
consistent level of mediocrity. The product doesn>t really get
better, but the customers learn to tolerate its idiocyncracies and
bugs. If left alone, the customers get very comfortable with the
product and refuse to tolerate any furthur changes. This is bad for
selling updates, so new bugs, instabilities, and preformance issues
need to be introduced in the latest updates, to inspire such
conservative customers to update.

--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

Robert Baer · Guest

invalid@example.com wrote:

[quote]Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8Bit

Microsoft Tries to Polish Vista By Saul Hansell

Microsoft is really taking the gloves off this time.
ZDNet is reporting that it will spend $500 million to
make a powerful statement to its hundreds of millions
of customers. I imagine the statement would have to go
something like this:

"Windows Vista isn’t really as bad as they say.
Honest. Please don’t be mad at us. We promise our next
operating system will be better. Pinky swear."

Those aren’t exactly the words they use, but it is
certainly the tone of the ad that Microsoft has started
running on its site. I can’t find it, but Ed Bott at
ZDNet did and has a copy here. It shows a painting of a
tall ship with the headline “At one point everyone
thought the Earth was flat. Get the facts about Windows
Vista.”

That promotion leads to a page that acknowledges that
Vista had problems:

"But we know a few of you were disappointed by your
early encounter. Printers didn’t work. Games felt
sluggish. You told us—loudly at times—that the latest
Windows wasn’t always living up to your high
expectations for a Microsoft product."

It takes a minute to figure out where to find
Microsoft’s response to this criticism: You need to
click some arrows on the page. (Why can’t Microsoft use
the plus Icon popularized by Google and lots of
others?)

The company asserts that it is now compatible with the
vast bulk of software and hardware. It also boasts that
Vista is more secure, faster, uses less energy and is
even “sexier.”

"Sure, Windows Vista gets a lot of compliments on its
aesthetics. But its style serves an important purpose:
to put everything within a click’s reach and make you
more productive."

Microsoft, is probably right that Vista gets a bit of a
bum rap. Lots of people find that Vista works fine and
is an improvement over Windows XP. I use Vista on a
home computer with little trouble. (And no, I don’t
hate Microsoft, despite what some commenters say. I am
a big fan of Word 2007, and I even pay for Microsoft’s
OneCare anti-virus and backup software.)

But this is still a dreadful place for Microsoft to be.
It is fighting Google on one side and Apple on the
other. And both of those companies have flaws, products
that don’t quite work right, have gaps and disappoint
users. But both Google and Apple have products that you
don’t need to be told to notice they are sexy. That
changes how people see the more prosaic parts of their
product lines and makes people far more open to
considering new products.

Even if you are a big fan of Microsoft, consider which
you would rather read about first: a something new from
Google, Apple or Microsoft?

After spending $500 million, Microsoft might be able to
convince people that Windows Vista is not awful. But
just because you can show the earth is not flat,
doesn’t mean you will rule the new world.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/22/microsoft-tries-to-polish-vista/?ref=technology

....also, consider that this campain not only bypasses the disty and[/quote]
partnership channels, but has gotten them a bit flustered and worried.

Robert Baer · Guest

Dirk Bruere at NeoPax wrote:

[quote]invalid@example.com wrote:

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8Bit

Microsoft Tries to Polish Vista By Saul Hansell

Microsoft is really taking the gloves off this time.
ZDNet is reporting that it will spend $500 million to
make a powerful statement to its hundreds of millions
of customers. I imagine the statement would have to go
something like this:

"Windows Vista isn’t really as bad as they say.
Honest. Please don’t be mad at us. We promise our next
operating system will be better. Pinky swear."

Those aren’t exactly the words they use, but it is
certainly the tone of the ad that Microsoft has started
running on its site. I can’t find it, but Ed Bott at
ZDNet did and has a copy here. It shows a painting of a
tall ship with the headline “At one point everyone
thought the Earth was flat. Get the facts about Windows
Vista.”

That promotion leads to a page that acknowledges that
Vista had problems:

"But we know a few of you were disappointed by your
early encounter. Printers didn’t work. Games felt
sluggish. You told us—loudly at times—that the latest
Windows wasn’t always living up to your high
expectations for a Microsoft product."

It takes a minute to figure out where to find
Microsoft’s response to this criticism: You need to
click some arrows on the page. (Why can’t Microsoft use
the plus Icon popularized by Google and lots of
others?)

The company asserts that it is now compatible with the
vast bulk of software and hardware. It also boasts that
Vista is more secure, faster, uses less energy and is
even “sexier.”

"Sure, Windows Vista gets a lot of compliments on its
aesthetics. But its style serves an important purpose:
to put everything within a click’s reach and make you
more productive."

Microsoft, is probably right that Vista gets a bit of a
bum rap. Lots of people find that Vista works fine and
is an improvement over Windows XP. I use Vista on a
home computer with little trouble. (And no, I don’t
hate Microsoft, despite what some commenters say. I am
a big fan of Word 2007, and I even pay for Microsoft’s
OneCare anti-virus and backup software.)

But this is still a dreadful place for Microsoft to be.
It is fighting Google on one side and Apple on the
other. And both of those companies have flaws, products
that don’t quite work right, have gaps and disappoint
users. But both Google and Apple have products that you
don’t need to be told to notice they are sexy. That
changes how people see the more prosaic parts of their
product lines and makes people far more open to
considering new products.

Even if you are a big fan of Microsoft, consider which
you would rather read about first: a something new from
Google, Apple or Microsoft?

After spending $500 million, Microsoft might be able to
convince people that Windows Vista is not awful. But
just because you can show the earth is not flat,
doesn’t mean you will rule the new world.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/22/microsoft-tries-to-polish-vista/?ref=technology

Vista is an ME re-run.
From the users POV the best thing they could do is not release the next
OS until they get it right. REALLY get it right.

Never happen.[/quote]

Robert Baer · Guest

Tim Williams wrote:

[quote]"John Larkin" <jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in message
news:mtrn84p5jr2vbcnmjqkrngfo7au2qbahgc@4ax.com...

IE, Outlook, and any other Microsoft products should not be allowed
anywhere near a tcp/ip port.

Now, I find them quite sufficient. I challenge you to scan my computer and
find a virus.

Tim

Their Os *IS* a virus![/quote]

mpm · Guest

On Jul 26, 11:52 pm, John Larkin
<jjlar...@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
[quote]On Sat, 26 Jul 2008 22:49:10 +0000, inva...@example.com wrote:
"But we know a few of you were disappointed by your
early encounter. Printers didn’t work. Games felt
sluggish. You told us—loudly at times—that the latest
Windows wasn’t always living up to your high
expectations for a Microsoft product."

High expectations of Microsoft products? Somebody has those?

XP is good enough that they should leave it alone. Vista is trying to
mimic the Apple OS, but without the programming skills.

Word is an astounding POS.

IE, Outlook, and any other Microsoft products should not be allowed
anywhere near a tcp/ip port.

Their self-flattering prose is, as usual, disgusting.

John
[/quote]
By itself, Word also gets a bad rap.
It>s actually very, very powerful software - and that is its downfall.
Most people (even programmers) don>t need that kind of power in a word
processor.

I eventually took the plunge and got familiar with the Word object
model.
After that, the whole package started to look a lot more "friendly",
even inviting.
Word actually has the largest object model of any of the business
apps, even Excel.
Which is counterintuitive, at first glance.

But I agree. For the guy who justs wants to shoot off a quick
business letter, the first time Word gets a few settings out of whack,
it can be quite tempting to throw the whole thing out the window. No
pun intended.

-mpm

Martin Brown · Guest

John Larkin wrote:
[quote]On Sat, 26 Jul 2008 22:49:10 +0000, invalid@example.com wrote:

"But we know a few of you were disappointed by your
early encounter. Printers didn’t work. Games felt
sluggish. You told us—loudly at times—that the latest
Windows wasn’t always living up to your high
expectations for a Microsoft product."

High expectations of Microsoft products? Somebody has those?
[/quote]
Apparently with enough advertising spend you can get the punters to
believe in just about anything. The sad thing is that there are good
engineers in MS who know how to do things right, but somehow their
corporate culture prevents good quality software engineering.
[quote]
XP is good enough that they should leave it alone. Vista is trying to
mimic the Apple OS, but without the programming skills.
[/quote]
My only copy of Vista came preinstalled and is sufficiently unstable on
a Toshiba laptop that I would never recommend anyone to use it.
[quote]
Word is an astounding POS.
[/quote]
Although this is true for all versions in the case of Word, my favourite
bug is the exponentially growing filesize when documents are swapped in
a corporate environment with more than one version of Word in use and
contain drag and dropped pictures.

Excel 2003 was quite good for an MS product.

But Excel 2007 is particularly lamentable. The as shipped version yields
log graphs of scientific data with high dynamic range show two ticks for
10^8 and no 10^7. The statistics functions are broken as usual and they
wrecked the previously working polynomial fit and degraded it to give
the same answer as the hopelessly broken LINEST worksheet function.
Various other internals are either withdrawn, unsupported or broken.
[quote]
IE, Outlook, and any other Microsoft products should not be allowed
anywhere near a tcp/ip port.

Their self-flattering prose is, as usual, disgusting.
[/quote]
We are in complete agreement here.

Regards,
Martin Brown
** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **

Guy Macon · Guest

Jeff Liebermann wrote:
[quote]
Dirk Bruere at NeoPax wrote:

From the users POV the best thing they could do is not release
the next OS until they get it right. REALLY get it right.

That won>t happen. Users only buy upgrades in the vain hope that the
next release will fix the bugs of the current version. Of course that
never happens because features and functions are added faster than
bugs get fixed. There>s always hope, but it never seems to happen.

If Microsoft actually did release something that was bug free, nobody
would upgrade to subsequent versions, resulting in a predictable
revenue loss. Therefore, it is beneficial to Microsoft (and other
software vendors) to intentionally leave a few major bugs in their
current products.

How it works:

1. It takes 18 months from initial release for a major software
product to be worth buying. Microsoft seems to take a bit longer at
about 24 months.

2. Subsequent upgrades add bloat, fix a few old bugs, add more bugs,
slow down the machine, and require additional RAM and diskspace.

3. After about 3-5 years, the products usually stabilize into a
consistent level of mediocrity. The product doesn>t really get
better, but the customers learn to tolerate its idiosyncrasies and
bugs. If left alone, the customers get very comfortable with the
product and refuse to tolerate any further changes. This is bad for
selling updates, so new bugs, instabilities, and performance issues
need to be introduced in the latest updates, to inspire such
conservative customers to update.
[/quote]
Brilliant analysis!

I would add that, in order to further discourage customers who
refuse to pour more money into "upgrades", Microsoft mixes
together must-have security fixes with updates that are designed
to drive the customer to a newer version, mixing them together
with almost identical descriptions. Later, they announce an
end of support so that, for example, a security flaw in code
that is shared by Windows 2000 and Windows XP only gets patched
for the Windows XP users. In the Linux world, a patch is made
available to all versions that share code, even if the code has
not changed since version 1.0.

Here is Bill Gates himself, confirming that what you describe as...

"Users only buy upgrades in the vain hope that the next
release will fix the bugs of the current version. Of
course that never happens because features and functions
are added faster than bugs get fixed. There>s always hope,
but it never seems to happen."

....is a deliberate business decision.

------------------------------------------------------------

FOCUS Magazine Interview with Bill Gates:

Microsoft Code Has No Bugs (that Microsoft cares about)

Source:
http://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft+has+no+bugs
http://www.cantrip.org/nobugs.html

-----

In this interview, Big Bill gets distracted and reveals his
contempt for you, his loyal customer.

In an interview for German weekly magazine FOCUS (nr. 43,
October 23, 1995, pages 206-212), Microsoft`s Mr. Bill
Gates has made some statements about software quality of
MS products. [See executive summary, below.] After lengthy
inquiries about how PCs should and could be used (including
some angry comments on some questions which Mr. Gates
evidently did not like), the interviewer comes to storage
requirements of MS products; it ends with the following
dispute:

-----

FOCUS:
Every new release of a software which has less bugs than the
older one is also more complex and has more features...

Gates:
No, only if that is what will sell!

FOCUS:
But...

Gates:
Only if that is what will sell! We>ve never done a piece
of software unless we thought it would sell. That>s why
everything we do in software ... it>s really amazing: We do
it because we think that>s what customers want. That>s why
we do what we do.

FOCUS:
But on the other hand - you would say: Okay, folks, if you
don>t like these new features, stay with the old version,
and keep the bugs?

Gates:
No! We have lots and lots of competitors. The new version --
it>s not there to fix bugs. That>s not the reason we come up
with a new version.

FOCUS:
But there are bugs an any version which people would really
like to have fixed.

Gates:
No! There are no significant bugs in our released software
that any significant number of users want fixed.

FOCUS:
Oh, my God. I always get mad at my computer if MS Word
swallows the page numbers of a document which I printed a
couple of times with page numbers. If I complain to anybody
they say "Well, upgrade from version 5.11 to 6.0."

Gates:
No! If you really think there>s a bug you should report a
bug. Maybe you>re not using it properly. Have you ever
considered that?

FOCUS:
Yeah, I did...

Gates:
It turns out Luddites don>t know how to use software
properly, so you should look into that. -- The reason we
come up with new versions is not to fix bugs. It>s
absolutely not. It>s the stupidest reason to buy a new
version I ever heard. When we do a new version we put in
lots of new things that people are asking for. And so, in no
sense, is stability a reason to move to a new version. It>s
never a reason.

FOCUS:
How come I keep being told by computer vendors "Well, we
know about this bug, wait till the next version is there,
it>ll be fixed?" I hear this all the time. How come? If
you>re telling me there are no significant bugs in software
and there is no reason to do a new version?

Gates:
No. I>m saying: We don>t do a new version to fix bugs. We
don>t. Not enough people would buy it. You can take a
hundred people using Microsoft Word. Call them up and say
"Would you buy a new version because of bugs?" You won>t get
a single person to say they>d buy a new version because of
bugs. We>d never be able to sell a release on that basis.

FOCUS:
Probably you have other contacts to your software
developers. But if Mister Anybody, like me, calls up a store
or a support line and says, "Hey listen, there>s a bug" ...
90 percent of the time I get the answer "Oh, well, yeah,
that>s not too bad, wait to the next version and it>ll be
fixed." That>s how the system works.

Gates:
Guess how much we spend on phone calls every year.

FOCUS:
Hm, a couple of million dollars?

Gates:
500 million dollars a year. We take every one of these phone
calls and classify them. That>s the input we use to do the
next version. So it>s like the worlds biggest feedback loop.
People call in -- we decide what to do on it. Do you want to
know what percentage of those phonecalls relates to bugs in
the software? Less than one percent.

FOCUS:
So people call in to say "Hey listen, I would love to have
this and that feature?"

Gates:
Actually, that>s about five percent. Most of them call to
get advice on how to do a certain thing with the software.
That>s the primary thing. We could have you sit and listen
to these phone calls. There are millions and millions of
them. It really isn>t statistically significant. Sit in and
listen to Win 95 calls, sit in and listen to Word calls, and
wait, just wait for weeks and weeks for someone to call in
and say "Oh, I found a bug in this thing."...

FOCUS:
So where does this common feeling of frustration come from
that unites all the PC users? Everybody experiences it every
day that these things simply don>t work like they should.

Gates:
Because it>s cool. It>s like, "Yeah, been there done that -
oh, yeah, I know that bug." - I can understand that
phenomenon sociologically, not technically.

-----

Executive Summary:

So...

* Bug reports are statistically, therefore actually,
unimportant;

* If you want a bug fixed, you are (by definition)
in the minority;

* Microsoft doesn>t care about bugs because bug
fixes are not a significant source of revenue;

* If you think you found a bug, it really only
means you>re incompetent;

* Anyway, people only complain about bugs to show how
cool they are, not because bugs cause any real problems.

Straight from the horse>s mouth.

-----

Source:
http://www.cantrip.org/nobugs.html
http://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft+has+no+bugs

------------------------------------------------------------

--
Guy Macon
<http://www.GuyMacon.com/>


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