Dear Bill Gates.....

[Technoid]

Theres guys that swears that MS pays people to troll for them on forums and etc and if i chose to believe them I know whos the resident one

[Technoid]

Won't happen. Lots of places are behind restrictive firewalls, MS still ships CD's to corporate customers!

Like WPA would never happen?

[Jessterw]

I was referring more to the mouse problem. The guy in the article rants about how his mouse misbehaves, when that's CLEARLY a known problem - he knows he's got it, and he's not addressing it. Instead he's blaming Microsoft for it.

The Windows Update thing is pretty new, apparently lots of people are seeing it now. I'm sure MS is going to catch no end of grief over it.

But regardless, this particular article is pretty whiny. The guy lost his bookmarks, and has an already pretty defective machine, and he's whining about it.

"Ha ha! Let's bash Bill Gates because he's rich and successful and used to write decent software! HA! WHAT A LOSER!"

*sigh*

First off, the Windows Update thing is not new. Far from it. I first saw it a few years back. Hopefully MS does catch grief over it, they need to until it's fixed, but we all know that won't happen.

Secondly, well, I'll just save my breath because it's obvious you're going to blame this on the user by making all sorts of assumptions about his "pretty defective" machine (err ok). MS may not be at fault for the mouse problem, at least not directly, but they damn sure are for the main reason behind his missive.

[agallag]

Like WPA would never happen?

It didn't happen for corporate customers. I've never used an MS product with WPA (other than the Vista beta), and I'm all MS here.

[Technoid]

It didn't happen for corporate customers. I've never used an MS product with WPA (other than the Vista beta), and I'm all MS here.

Oh....so nice for the corporate user......

[Gurm]

First off, the Windows Update thing is not new. Far from it. I first saw it a few years back. Hopefully MS does catch grief over it, they need to until it's fixed, but we all know that won't happen.

No, because it falls into the category of "things that piss off end users but haven't actually been given any thought by Microsoft", much like the focus-stealing popup windows, the irritating balloon tips, and the dozen other things that top the list of "dear GOD make this shit go away from the OS" but have been with us since Windows 3.1!

Secondly, well, I'll just save my breath because it's obvious you're going to blame this on the user by making all sorts of assumptions about his "pretty defective" machine (err ok). MS may not be at fault for the mouse problem, at least not directly, but they damn sure are for the main reason behind his missive.

Sure. He's ticked off because of the Windows Update thing. Sure, I can see that. I bet it's not intentional, though. He ascribes malice where none is due. WGA? That involves malice. Get angry over that. Activation? Get upset over that, sure.

But nobody at Microsoft sat there and said "y'know what'll PISS PEOPLE OFF? If we make an automatic update REBOOT THEIR COMPUTER SPONTANEOUSLY!" That doesn't make any sense. It's happened a couple times over the course of automatic update, I'm sure it's some stupid flag somewhere. It's hardly worse than the "hey look, my Mac just suddenly told me 'error 4' and all my work is gone!" but I do understand that it makes him angry.

But then he proceeds to blame the rest of his computer woes on the same imaginary malicious entity. As if Microsoft, in addition to deciding to make him lose his shortcuts by spontaneously rebooting his machine, also said to itself "haha! Let's make his mouse run like crap!"

[Gurm]

It didn't happen for corporate customers. I've never used an MS product with WPA (other than the Vista beta), and I'm all MS here.

Join the club. I actually had to deal with activation recently for my parents... and it pissed me off. And we're wrangling with it at work, trying to make a universal image for one of our corporate customers. Microsoft partner support politely told us where to go, which frankly I didn't expect from them. *sigh*

But on the other hand, some of my earlier predictions about WPA have in fact proven true. While I hear all sorts of horror stories about it, the other day I completely gutted a machine 3 times, and each and every time it happily activated over the Internet, even though I had already activated it a couple of times before. So it is FAR more tolerant than you might otherwise think. And frankly it's just NOT THAT BIG A PROBLEM for the average user to make a single (very fast) phone call to the helpful Pakistani lady on the other end of the phone, and punch in her 20-digit number. It's irritating to us geeks, though. Which is why we try to always use a VLK.

MS treats its corporate customers COMPLETELY differently from its home customers. Which is true throughout the business world. Ever sit on hold or argue with an Indian fellow about your broken Dell? Not if you're a corporate customer. Corporate customer care is instantaneous, and parts arrive the following morning by 10AM with a smiley-faced technician to install them.

MS corporate customers don't know about Windows Update, because their administrators handle that for them in the middle of the night when nobody is at work. They don't know about activation, because their machines and their software doesn't require it. It never has - and for the foreseeable future it probably never will.

All those rumors about corporate customers having to now jump through the same hoops as home customers? Just that, rumors. I've got a VLK for every piece of MS software I could possibly want to install.