Microsoft unveils Web phone hardware

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To converge, or not to converge, what was the question???

I?m sure this will open up a whole new range of possibilities. And there will no doubt be new revenue streams for Microsoft, which will be great for them, their shareholders, and associated customers and partners.

But for the consumers, I have misgivings. I currently run a media centre pc at home, and have done so for about 2 years. The main benefit I originally hoped to achieve was consolidation of all my devices, and the easy porting of things around my home. TV? Not required. Separate sound system? Not required. PVR? Not required. It seemed perfect.

However?

I needed a particular adapter to run the set top box, as it conformed to a different standard. This was not included in the MCE PC that I bought from HP. Imagine my surprise when I hooked it all up, only to find that the main function in my eyes, running TV, was unavailable. After calls to my PC vendor, Microsoft, and HP, it turns out that none of these groups would take the problem on as their responsibility. Since the PC could control standard TV with an aerial, clearly there was nothing wrong with the product, and I was stuck with it.

Help was eventually found in the online forums.

This is not a good start. It is all too easy for one group to palm off the problem onto another, but this leaves the consumer, who has paid money, out in the cold.

More recently, other problems have occurred. My TV provider has changed their channel structure, however the separate company that offers electronic program guide (EPG) information does not reflect the change in the downloaded guide. As my wife was fond of a particular program offered on channel 610 (Telewest \ NTL \ Virgin Media ), which has been moved to channel 601 now, when we use the Microsoft program guide to program and record the show, we get the wrong show.

There has been no solution so far, and after the problems from before, the sad part is that I?m not going to waste my time talking to a call centre operator who either doesn?t know, doesn?t understand, or cant help.

So moving to this initiative. Will we see a difference in customer service? Presently, we have a phone system which is only a phone system. When things go wrong, we call the phone company on our mobile phones, or use another solution (eg Skype), or ask our neighbours.

The phone company don?t tell us to reboot our phone. They don?t tell us we need the latest patch. They don?t tell us we need the latest antivirus. They don?t tell us that the problem belongs with another area. They fix it.

Will we see this kind of customer service?

I can see the issues now? Call quality problems? Blame the internet. Drop outs? Blame the internet. Cant connect? Blame the internet?

And so on.

The basic problem is that there are too many fingers in the pie, and no one company that will take ownership. This is what happens when you converge.

And this is the exact reason why I will no longer go down the converged path as my sole solution, nor as a backup solution. There is the old saying of once bitten twice shy. Microsoft had their chance with me, and its just not going to happen again.

Posted by: roberto_maietta@...   Posted on: 05/14/07 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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