This is not really a rant so much as it is a recognition that monolithic company's do not have the time or the patience to hear what the little guys (namely individual customers - like you and me) have to say, want or need. They just don't care as long as their marketing department can make it sound right, it doesn't matter if it is right.
Like many of you, I have been using MS products since MS-DOS. Heck I even still use a couple of batch commands written in DOS style to accomplish certain things. You basically cannot work on a computer without using their products, even if all of your stuff is free ware open source, chances are somewhere in your internet movement of email or online ordering that your information will go through a Microsoft product. They are everywhere. hence the monolith reference.
That being said, I think somebody needs to tell these guys that enough is enough. They need to STOP and think about what they are doing to us and what they have done to us and make it right. Fat chance they ever will. This is Probably an exercise in futility. I am going to have my say though. Lets start at the present and work backwards.
An Open Letter to Microsoft ( or bullet points to live by)
- The general public does not want, does not need and cannot afford Windows Vista. Why don't you just sit down and fix the crap you already sold us last year? We won’t be able to afford the hardware or the software. You are the ones that need us to buy it, because of the planned obsolescence of Windows XP. Make it affordable for the general public and we may purchase it. Keep as planned and watch us not buy. It is way too friggin’ expensive. If you can basically give away game consoles in order to get in and stay in the game market, do the same for the home computer user. Don’t you think we know you under priced the original Xbox on purpose?
- Fix your software before you sell it. Make everybody who sells it do the same if they want the rights to install it on a computer running your OS. Quit putting out this bug ridden, half done, patched to death , worthless code you call a finished product. Do the knowledgebase articles on all the bugs in your code have to number in the millions before somebody over there in Redmond gets the joke?
- MS-Office costs way too much and is too confusing. It is too complex. There are too many variations and too many permutations of the various ways it can be configured and bought. You ever wonder why you sell so many “Academic Editions” It makes too many mistakes getting installed. Simplify it and make it easy for us to use. I write some code (although I am not a programmer) use office every single day and have never used some of the silly bells and whistles you stick on a product in order to give it a higher perceived value. Knock it off. It is stupid and is a rip off to charge $ 500.00 to upgrade a product you already own.
Bad PR too. - Spend some of your billions in cash and fix the junk you sold us in the past that millions of people still use every day. You told us Windows 95 was the greatest thing since sliced bread. You should have realized you made a mistake and should have done the right thing and made it right for all of us when it crashed on Bill Gates during the live TV product launch. Instead you listened to some marketing guy who told you it would be ok, because you could now sell more , newer versions instead of giving away the fix to the junk you sold in the first place. I mean , why would we need a virus scanner in the first place , if the product wasn’t ill prepared to deal with the problems presented by your code?
- Step up and fix the errors your people made and quit selling us “Upgrades” which are really “Updates” to existing products. You don’t really expect us to 100 % believe that a product marked as “Must have XXX product to qualify” doesn’t really mean you are relying on previous code of the former product to be in place so you can fix it do you?
- I can go to the auto parts store and still buy new parts for my 1986 Ford Ranger Truck. Can I still get code and repair support for Windows 3.0 ? , 3.1 ?, 3.11?, Win 95?, Win 98?, Win 98SE (second edition a separate OS charge for the upgrade)?, Windows ME?, Windows CE?, Win 2000 ?, Windows 2000 Professional (or Windows NT if you prefer)?
NO, I can’t and it is planned that way and it is crap.
It is a big fat stinking pile of BS. - I have refrigerators, televisions and radios that last longer than your Operating systems do. It is not a crime to sell something into a planned obsolescence death spiral, but it should be, because you sell all of them like they are a brand new product when in fact all of those products contain elements and modules that were built with the first versions. I can still find the icons file I have been using since the very first versions of your operating systems in your latest products.
- And now here come the platitudes for Windows Vista. Go on over to Vista Features And you’ll see things like “Windows Vista introduces a breakthrough user experience and is designed to help you feel confident in your ability to view, find, and organize information and to control your computing experience.”
- Ahhhhrrrggghhh ! This is a new product designed to pump up the bank accounts of Microsoft executives and raise the stock price and that is all. You will need new everything if you run a Pentium class processor to run this thing. It eats hard drives for breakfast, and needs more RAM than most people have ever seen in any computer they have ever owned. Almost none of your current software will run correctly on 64 bit processing. Your current motherboard probably will not run it (especially if it is 3 or 4 years old) , your current monitor is not big enough, your fancy video cards won’t run on it most likely and if you have a laptop you are thinking about upgrading , Fugghedaboutit!
- Here is the worst part.
All of this and more is designed into the product. The marketing plan is to separate and extract as many corporate dollars as is humanly monolithically possible from corporate clients and you as the individual do not matter. - By the way did I mention that the cost of a new computer will triple or quintuple (depending on whom you believe) over current prices? The days of a good cheap computer are about gone.
- Yeah Bill. This is definitely for our own good and is the best you could do. We are all so proud of you and your good works. And you wonder why Linux is getting bigger and bigger everyday ? Wake up and get a clue. By a vowel Vanna. Kinda brings back the heady days of Y2K and the free wheeling spending of all those IT departments who set those sales records don’t it?
I hate getting taken advantage of and having them think we all are just stupid mindless sheep and of course you don’t know any better.~
WHATEVER. Smells like dog crap, looks like dog crap, must be dog crap.
jmho
~bigmike
