Monday, January 05, 2004
Computers and Microsoft:
I have a real problem with computers and Microsoft. Is it just me, or is there something wrong with a company selling a product knowing full well that many of its features don't work and may in fact not work for years. This seems to be a common practice with Microsoft.
Software coming from Microsoft is regularly shipped out with so many flaws that its hard to believe they don't know about them at the time of initial release. If a car, for instance, was sold with this many defects I'm quite sure that a class action lawsuit would be started very quickly. Why then does Microsoft get away with this. When I purchase something I expect it to work very well right from the start and not after I've spent a great deal of time and effort to download all the patches and try to figure out why its not working. This is the sellers job not the purchasers.
The explanation that the software is very complex does not cut it. Combine this with the closed text and in most cases the problem is not fixable by the user without purchasing the developers copy.
Microsoft should stop this practice immediately, selling flawed software, or make the code available to us so that we could repair it ourselves. Failure to do either one in my view is criminal and if I was an attorney I would launch such a lawsuit myself just for the fun of it. Any takers?
Combine this with my experiences with Compak computers and its enough to make anyone walk away never to return. I purchased a Compak Presario computer which has a system save partition (Compak specific). This feature has not worked from the start and judging from 3 years of updates they are fully aware of this. This feature has a problem with multiple hard drives (another patch-doesn't work) and continues to be a major problem as this is the primary back-up component of the system.
Leads me to believe that their pre-release debugging leaves a great deal to be desired and these systems should have been recalled.
Particularly delightful is the fact that support for this system is now ending and they still haven't fixed the problem.
I have spent what now must be nearly 100 hours with their support personnel on the phone particularly in the beginning. This translates to thousands of hours over 5 years re-booting and debugging a system that should have worked from the start. In addition their support personnel pleaded ignorance of these problems rather then telling me that they were aware of the problem and would update me when possible. 3 months later I received a softpak from them with fixes for most of the problems. This means that they have effectively wasted all my time trying to solve problems that they were working on. Again honesty in business goes a long way and Compak's lack of it ensures that I will never have anything to do with any Compak product ever produced and if I had the resources I would sue to recover this lost time and productivity as well as the full purchase price.
Computers are expensive and as such it is bewildering to me that hardware and software manufactures can get away with this. In fairness I can not make this observation about other computer manufacturers that I am experienced with. Both E-machines and Hewlett Packard don't seem to have anywhere near the same number of problems and have worked well with much less heartache.
Again Compak was aware of these problems and chose not to disclose them, Wasting my time and money!!!
We are not all simpletons and manufacturers would do well to keep this in mind the next time they try to feed this kind of bull.
I have a real problem with computers and Microsoft. Is it just me, or is there something wrong with a company selling a product knowing full well that many of its features don't work and may in fact not work for years. This seems to be a common practice with Microsoft.
Software coming from Microsoft is regularly shipped out with so many flaws that its hard to believe they don't know about them at the time of initial release. If a car, for instance, was sold with this many defects I'm quite sure that a class action lawsuit would be started very quickly. Why then does Microsoft get away with this. When I purchase something I expect it to work very well right from the start and not after I've spent a great deal of time and effort to download all the patches and try to figure out why its not working. This is the sellers job not the purchasers.
The explanation that the software is very complex does not cut it. Combine this with the closed text and in most cases the problem is not fixable by the user without purchasing the developers copy.
Microsoft should stop this practice immediately, selling flawed software, or make the code available to us so that we could repair it ourselves. Failure to do either one in my view is criminal and if I was an attorney I would launch such a lawsuit myself just for the fun of it. Any takers?
Combine this with my experiences with Compak computers and its enough to make anyone walk away never to return. I purchased a Compak Presario computer which has a system save partition (Compak specific). This feature has not worked from the start and judging from 3 years of updates they are fully aware of this. This feature has a problem with multiple hard drives (another patch-doesn't work) and continues to be a major problem as this is the primary back-up component of the system.
Leads me to believe that their pre-release debugging leaves a great deal to be desired and these systems should have been recalled.
Particularly delightful is the fact that support for this system is now ending and they still haven't fixed the problem.
I have spent what now must be nearly 100 hours with their support personnel on the phone particularly in the beginning. This translates to thousands of hours over 5 years re-booting and debugging a system that should have worked from the start. In addition their support personnel pleaded ignorance of these problems rather then telling me that they were aware of the problem and would update me when possible. 3 months later I received a softpak from them with fixes for most of the problems. This means that they have effectively wasted all my time trying to solve problems that they were working on. Again honesty in business goes a long way and Compak's lack of it ensures that I will never have anything to do with any Compak product ever produced and if I had the resources I would sue to recover this lost time and productivity as well as the full purchase price.
Computers are expensive and as such it is bewildering to me that hardware and software manufactures can get away with this. In fairness I can not make this observation about other computer manufacturers that I am experienced with. Both E-machines and Hewlett Packard don't seem to have anywhere near the same number of problems and have worked well with much less heartache.
Again Compak was aware of these problems and chose not to disclose them, Wasting my time and money!!!
We are not all simpletons and manufacturers would do well to keep this in mind the next time they try to feed this kind of bull.
# posted by Wil Smith : 12:29 p.m.
