BG: "...no significant bugs in our software..."

[Revener]

XP seems to update itself at least once a week, that seems a bit often to me.  ;-)

New upgrades can be intsalled............

[System]

why is this 'news'? ... I saw this almost 8 years ago now...

Can I submit 'news':"commodore goes bankrupt' that happend around the same time I believe?...

[Waccoon]

Maybe you're not using it properly.

I really can't stand statements like this.  Properly designed software has obvious functionality.

Sort of like, "Read The F***ing Manual".  I can't remember the last time I used a computer that actually CAME with a manual!  Oh, that's right, you can always log into Internet forums, or waste hundreds of dollars of company money on tech support.  What's the point in hiring a few technical writers?

I have a box for Citrix Multiuser (for OS/2 v2.0), and it comes with six manuals, each in excess of 200 pages.  It's complicated, but nevertheless it's nice to have a hard reference.

Today, hardware comes with a packing list!   Software comes with instructions telling you how to turn on your computer.

Oh, the humanity.   :-D

[MAD]

Hoya!

@Uncle-Billy-the-Big-Door

ROTFLAPIMU!!!!!!!!! :rolling: :rolling: :rolling:

Even if it is 8 years old, windozes is STILL crappy and bug-ridden!
Muhahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! ;-)

Be funky!

M A D

[vortexau]

umisef asked:

Is this the interview they did in 1995? If so, it's somewhat old news.......

Yes- its from 1995! But can you concer that Win3.11 would have had "no significant bugs ... ect"; and what about that Encarta-Encyclopaedia?

Moving on to 1997...

Date: Sat, 12 Apr 1997 06:03:30 -0400 (EDT)
From: Olin Shivers
To: sunday-lunch-list
Subject: Losing $35
Reply-to: shivers@ai.mit.edu

No lunch on Sunday, I am afraid.

Having just concluded a continuous 14-hour conversation with technical support people at Microsoft, my weekend plans have been altered to simply sleep.

The original topic was, "Why am I able to use my floppy drive in DOS, but not in Windows on the (brand new) Pentium box Hillary just bought, with the (brand new) Win95 installation?" Microsoft promised to resolve the issue, or refund my up-front consultation fee. Thirty-five bucks. (You're way ahead of me, I'm sure.) Did I mention this box had plug 'n play hardware and BIOS? Takes care of installation and configuration *automatically*.

Fourteen hours later, however, the issues had become much deeper and more richly textured. Hillary, who Just Doesn't Get It, wanted to break off the phone call and go return the system around hour five. And hour ten. I told her to shut the #### up and go home. Things had gotten beyond "fixing" the "computer."

I did get to know three technical support staff rather well; I was certainly impressed by their perseverance and courteousness. They were a little frightened by my focus, I think -- senior technical consultant #3 kept checking the logs he'd gotten from junior technical consultants #1 and #2, and asking me if I'd really been having a continuous conversation since 2 pm. He also kept getting concerned that I was running up a painful phone bill. I told him it was OK, not to worry about it. I didn't tell him I'd managed to get in on an 800 number (which entitles me to chalk up the $35 I paid them as a "pyrrhic failure," I guess).

In the end, Win95 had been reinstalled 3 times, from scratch. Individual drivers had been downloaded off the net and installed dozens of times. The system had been rebooted on average once every 3 minutes, I would estimate, for well over half a day. At some point, each of my floppy, cd rom, serial ports, modem, and display had all worked. For one golden moment, they had all worked. But upon the next reboot, it all vanished, a fleeting, evanescent moment of forever-after unattainable satori.

Needless to say, neither the system nor the floppy drive now work. But I certainly learned a very valuable lesson from the experience, and one would have to be mean-spirited and churlish not to consider the $35 fee that currently remains on my credit card anything but a welcome reminder of such hard-earned wisdom. A cash mnemonic, as it were.

My current plans, beyond abandoning my friends for the weekend, center around going to Lechemere, and returning their Pentium system (which was really cheap, by the way -- it's truly remarkable what a bargain I got on the thing) by the simple expedient of hurling the box from the sun-roof of my car through some convenient plate-glass window, en passant.

I might add that when the revolution comes, and the mob at the factory gates drags Bill Gates screaming from behind the wheel of his Porsche 959, I, for one, will not be there to urge clemency.

Good night.
-Olin

Think BG's mindset has changed any?

[vortexau]

Paul_Gadd advised:

Lets talk about Amiga companies bullshit promises in 1995 aswell.

(emphasis V)vortexau you really need to set your calendar to 2003 instead of posting links to 8 year old articles.

History is history, pal. What's that about "he who disregards history is doomed to repeat it"?

BTW- What're your thoughts on WinCE as a product?, and how supervisor access to WinXP can be gained by using a Win2000 CD..... something not possible with Win2000 as the OS?

BTW2- What's your reaction to that '14 hour service phone call' story I posted just above?

Amiga companies in 1995 were involved with a no-longer-produced platform ... MS supplies to 95% of the market! Or, do you dispute this also?

[Paul_Gadd]

@vortexau

You might be interested in what Gates said 8 years ago but i for one are interested in what is in 2003+.

As long as Gates and friends release what they promise then great, i have no interest in dragging up the past to break down every little quote of Gates to give me some sort of anti m$ pleasure.

The year is 2003 and it is time to look forward instead of finding faults with years old comments.

I wonder what happened in 1986 with the Amiga so called  "Dream machine" (did it get renamed?) or in 1988 what was the outcome when Atari took Commodore to court?.

Maybe someone would like to explain what happened in March 1996 when Amiga Technologies claimed to have two new Amiga machines but nothing surfaced.

[vortexau]

@Paul_Gadd-

Last I looked WinXP is a "2003+" software product.

Its not just "the past" ..... Who would dispute that MS products (contary to BG's words) still contain  a 'significant' amount of bugs?

The year is 2003 and it is time to look forward instead of finding faults with years old comments.

You don't find his/MS's atitude to users bug concerns relivant .. (even in "2003+")?

http://news.com.com/2100-1040-949018.html

Consumers unhappy with PC support
By Ian Fried
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
August 8, 2002, 1:08 PM PT

While consumers are paying less for their computers, a new survey shows they are also increasingly unhappy with the level of customer support they are getting with those PCs.

Consumer Reports magazine, which recently polled subscribers to its Web site, said this week that the results show customer satisfaction with technical support is down across the PC industry.

"It's significantly down," said Mark Kotkin, assistant director of survey research for Consumer Reports. Consumers are particularly concerned with increased time spent on hold as well as dropped calls to technical support, Kotkin said.



The lone bright spot in the survey was Apple Computer, which grabbed the top spot in the survey with a score of 74 out of 100 and was the only company to earn higher marks this year than it did last year.

( Can it be that, inspite of staying on the subject myself, you are not noticing this fact and thus keep trying to introduce subjects-of-concern in Amiga history? Why not start your own thread on "What I, Paul_Gadd, find alarming in the course of Amiga History"? )

[Paul_Gadd]

@Vortexau

I do not care if Gates and friends say their software contains no bugs and it is the users fault, i have no interest with it at all, as long as they bring out products then good for them if they want to preach crap and lies.

They release bug fixes and patches so they clearly are telling lies but does anyone care as long as m$ release products.

Most software has bugs so what? the only point i see for this thread is to attack Gates for comments 8 years ago,

Why not mention Amiga history? Amiga companies are the worst liars going but no one can mention that about wonderful honest Amiga companies.

[Waccoon]

Most software has bugs so what? the only point i see for this thread is to attack Gates for comments 8 years ago

I agree.  The problem is, Microsoft's priorities haven't changed much over the years:  Fix bugs after they surface with critical updates, rather than get it right the first time.

Of course, you can't really blame Microsoft for this.  The only way they can keep their grasp on the industry is to give the users what they want.  After the sucessful release of Windows95 (arguably the most bug-riddled OS release in history), what message did the consumer population give Microsoft?  How many people decided to stick with Win3.1?  How many MILLIONS of people ran out to stores and picked up Win95 the INSTANT it was put on store shelves?

Bill Gates is not a technician.  He's a salesman.

Microsoft is giving people just what they ask for:  fully-featured crap.  I use Win2000 because it's the most reliable Windows ever.  I have no intention of upgrading so long as Windows doesn't get any better.  I wish other people would do the same.

There is one quote from from gates that I remember that has not changed much over the years.  "I never think about the past.  I always look towards the future".  So, what did Vortexau say about repeating history?

[Waccoon]

Why not mention Amiga history? Amiga companies are the worst liars going but no one can mention that about wonderful honest Amiga companies.

For the same reason Amiga, Atari, and other financial flops didn't have very much influence on the industry:  If you can't make a profit, nobody cares what you did in the past.

Every time I see a documentary of the history of computers, the Amiga is never mentioned.  When I went to the Boston Computer Museum many years ago, they had prominent banners for IBM and Apple just about everywhere, but the Amigas (which ran half the displays in the museum), were all hidden and pasted over with cardboard and wallpaper.  Why bother glorifying a dead machine, or refusing corporate sponsorship?  It's only a museum, after all.

I think a lot of Amiga users quickly forget the early failures of the Amiga even before Commodore started losing mass amounts of cash.  We SHOULD be concerned about the past.  It is the only thing that is 100% certain.

[System]

bottom line is if you want to dig up ancient history why dont you dig up 'amiga' because as a viable platform its ancient history... 1993 was its last good year I think...
Lets discuss commodore going bankrupt... thats even more ancient... or why not discuss why amiga companies lied for so many years?/

[vortexau]

mips_proc joined Paul_Gadd, in wanting to change this discussion from BG to Amiga, jointly not starting his/their own forum thread:

...if you want to dig up ancient history why dont you dig up 'amiga'....

Like this?

Artari sues Amiga

or this?

Personal Computer World Show

But then I'd be straying from the topic! I'll leave that to you but please start your own forum thread/s. "bottom line is" BG's comments and attitude to his customers is an on-going event that effects users of that software still today.

Why is this something that you are incapable of comprehending?

.......................

(vortexau posting from a "nonviable platform" - "ancient history" computer running AWeb-II)

[Paul_Gadd]

"bottom line is" BG's comments and attitude to his customers is an on-going event that effects users of that software still today.

If you do not like his attitude then the best way is to  not use his software, no one is forcing you to use his software so stop using his software and go elsewhere is you don`t like it.

The users are to blame and not Gates.

[the_leander]

"bottom line is" BG's comments and attitude to his customers is an on-going event that effects users of that software still today."

This much is true, but who can blame him, his products have dominated the markets for what must be comming up for a decade now. Dispite what the quality of is products is,  he has the market by the balls.

"f you do not like his attitude then the best way is to not use his software, no one is forcing you to use his software so stop using his software and go elsewhere is you don`t like it."

The problem is is that windows is now pretty much the only viable computer solution out there unless you have a 6 figure bank account then you can go the way of Mac. But lets face it, the last real bit of competition Windows had on the x86 market was BeOS (No, I'm not forgetting Linux/BSD before you say anything) in terms of usablilty and effectiveness. QNX has gone completely underground as far as I can tell and SkyOS is years away from a public release. Linux and BSD will never become user friendly in the way simply because its comunity doesnt want to go in that direction.

"The users are to blaim and not Gates."

I almost bit your head off over this, but then I thought about it for a moment and realised you are quite correct in this.  most computer users out there don't even realise there are alternatives to windows, and who can blame their stupidity? When was the last time you saw an advert for anything other than windows? can anyone even remember seeing a linux advert? or a BeOS one, or QNX?? I sure as hell can't, their public profiles are non existant. On www.Bebits.com (a software repository along the lines of aminet but for BeOS) you can often see in talkback sections bewildered windows users asking how to install driver xyz for BeOS on windows..... they don't know any better!
Bill Gates has this industry in the bag, and unless .Net shows itself to be significantly worse than XP (which imho was a poor show after 2k) they're going to stay there.

[Paul_Gadd]

@the_leander

Very well put, people really must stop talking as if someone from Microsoft has a knife to their throat, no home user is forced to use Windows whatsoever.

Microsoft produces the goods and they are massive and i doubt they give a damn about the customers but that is the way it works in buisness, no company i have ever seen gives a toss about customers, one word "Profit".