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Hi John,

Actually, I never said I was unbiased ... in fact, I believe I even explained my bias in my post.

Yes, it is important for journalists and reporters to be unbiased, but we customers can (and most do) consider the entirety of their experience with a vendor and becomes somewhat biased -- toward the good ones and away from the bad ones.

My personal experience with MS started out good, and I followed them through PC revolution out of the mainframe's glass-room and into the Client:Server universe. I still think that this was, overall, a good idea. Sure C:S has it's own maintenance and support issues, but it empowers our user base in a manner which our mainframe solutions simply did not.

However, my experience with MS turned bad. The product's quality was poor to shoddy. Their customer support was, to put it politely, less than acceptable.

Then their rabid hounds of the BSA adopted a "shoot first, ask questions never" policy of attacking small businesses who could least afford it.

As a programmer myself, I am against software piracy. However, pirates should be caught and punished without insulting and injuring paying customers.

I worked at one facility who simply bought off-the-shelf compaq computers. They came preloaded with MS Windows and Office. Everything was legal... but, users being users, no-one had ever kept the little booklets that came with the boxes and no-one knew where to find anything to *prove* that they were legit -- so the BSA nearly shut that place down by requiring repeated compliance audits which were (1) expensive, (2) time consuming, and (3) interfered with getting real work done because the small staff would have to jump through the BSA's hoops rather than do their jobs.

Their attitude was "just buy more licenses and we'll go away". They wanted that small company to purchase a second time and pay for again, what they had already paid for when they bought the systems in the first place.

The owners were pissed to be treated like criminals instead of respected customers. They told MS and the BSA to "piss off", and mandated a move to Linux, which we did ... but this answer doesn't work everywhere or for everyone of course.

Where I work now we have Solaris, Linux, Windows, and Macintosh systems. I think Windows has come a long way, and XP seems stable and fairly solid. However, like the old saying goes, "it takes a lifetime to earn someone's trust -- and seconds to lose it forever".

So, no, I don't trust a word MS says. Yes, I am biased, and yes, with good cause.

Regards,
Jon

Posted by: JonathonDoe   Posted on: 11/14/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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