New
#11
Oh and.. it's just working. Well, it is.
Hi there
IMO it's called "Monetisation" -- in almost every field companies try and pare down to the bone --for example major Banks off shore everything so I.T systems crash regularly leaving thousands of customers stranded unable to use their cash / credit cards and can't spend their own money - embarrassing if you are trying to check out of a Hotel.
Almost any company you phone up has HIDEOUS menu systems, Indian call centres with people speaking unintelligible English and in any case they can't help you because they have to follow predefined scripts.
Customer service is well down the list of priorities - even if it is present at all.
However in comparison with a load of other big businesses Ms isn't that bad -- and it's usually true that most I.T depts. have enough to do keeping their networks running -- these aren't often the people attaching every conceivable piece of hardware to a system - and also they can't get into the mindset of an inexperienced user so they aren't so good at "Breaking" systems.
I've often thought that it shouldn't be the Power Users who test products before they get released but average Joes - preferably without specific I.T skills --that way 90% of software wouldn't be presented with hideous navigation methods and other obvious faults.
The Power users should test to make sure the system functions basically correctly --then unleash a a few "average" users on it. !!!!
Cheers
jimbo
Some very good points have been made. With all the different hardware and configurations MS does a pretty good job for most. I have had good updates and a few that required a little tweaking. Forums are a great place to get help. It's also obvious that MS is going through the forums and taking notes. I would like more end user input for functionality.
jimbo. I couldn't agree more. I come from a an ICL/Fujitsu VME mainframe, then Windows WAN background and we had people dedicated to ensuring that the latest operating system upgrades and latest vendor software offerings and the current, home-grown application software all worked . And, of course, for that we had a testing environment before thrusting the new version(s) on what have been unsuspecting 'users'. But average joe users - who, for example, may be one-man businesses or university students using a laptop, or Mr and Mrs retired couple who want to Skype their Australian relatives - do not have the benefit of a fully trained internal IT support team. They, including me, expect rigorous testing by our MS friends. In truth, the MS problem of today is I believe entirely the fault of the 1980's IT generation who couldn't get beta and other 'nearly right' versions of MS Windows fast enough - warts and all. Within my own UK government we had managers who couldn't get their hands on a PC fast enough and who were keen to be one-step-ahead of their colleagues in the latest MS Windows and application tool race. Result: Hey said MS, we have a ready and willing global testing resource - we have high user demand, let's respond quickly, do some minimal testing amongst ourselves and get versions out for 'user testing'; the scale of testing that we could never afford to buy in and its being offered for free. John
And as a general rule of precaution: Never ever upgrade. A clean install is the only way to go. I had to learn this (again) with Windows 10. From XP to Vista and from Vista to 8 I did clean installs. With 10 I though I could try the upgrade process but the problems are still the same, lot's of strange issues that are almost not fixable. I did a clean install and now Windows 10 has been running almost flawlessly for several weeks. There is a lot you can do by yourself to avoid trouble. And like others have already mentioned: Windows is a very complicated piece of software that runs on billions of computers, this combination is bound to cause a problem here and there.
JohnGroom, its not just Microsoft that is the issue or blamed issue. Applications software are sometimes the cause of headaches. I too worked in VTAM/CICS IBM mainframe environment and LAN/WAN's. I was once Novell Netware certified and implementing new Novell server versions was worse than a new Microsoft OS. IBM's OS2 wasn't a "walk in the park" to implement.
Apple just (yesterday) released IOS 10. The first thing it did was "brick" a lot of units.
Just a thought.. but the clean install is better than an upgrade used to be a good rule of thumb but not now. With CU's coming down frequently it would be complicated to clean install the OS with each update, update the ISO with the KB for the CU and reinstalling the software that's used each time.
I, too, come from that background - nearly 40 years of IBM mainframe systems programming / administration prior to retiring 7 years ago. So a lot of my attitudes seem a bit, umm, quaint to modern PC crowd. I expect software to be well tested by the vendor ... including extensive beta testing by both experienced and naive users. And I recognize that the user community is always going to be the gamma test team because the vendor is always going to miss something.
But one of my "quaint" ideas is that an upgrade isn't forced on a customer. Customers that don't have those dedicated IT teams need to be able to wait until software is reasonably stable.
Microsoft clearly recognizes the difference between home customers and professional customers. Those customers likely to have IT staff get the "Enterprise" version of Windows - a fairly clean, stripped down version. Those customers without the IT staff get a "Professional" version full of glitzy (and sometimes buggy) bloatware (that MS calls "Apps") that might be able to be throttled down by settings or gpedit.
Seems to me that the MS re-definition of "professional" explains some of the problems expressed in this thread.
Along with my VTAM/CICS, the Federal Agency I worked for used IBM Token Ring LAN. I guess that is a dinosaur now.I, too, come from that background - nearly 40 years of IBM mainframe systems programming / administration