Now that the dust is somewhat settled, perhaps some generic comments may be appropriate.



In Bonnie's second post:

I love the bit where they actually ADMIT that this issue is annoying

"they" would seem to imply the impression that Microsoft admitted something. The site that was linked is not a Microsoft site and the person who "admitted" (bragged would be better) that there was an incovenience is essentially an unidentified SPGWK. (Self-Proclaimed Genius with Keyboard).

In this case, the information appears to be accurate, and with the exception of the minor grammatical error(s) the poster offers good information. A pervasive problem, since about the time that Vista appeared, has been that Microsoft has ceased posting publicly accessible information on any of their products. Help files conained within the products invariably contain no help, and instead refer you to "chat groups" where "someone may have found a solution."

For one specific problem, at the recommended Microsoft recommended/provided chat groups I found more than 80 separate threads related to the problem. Eleven had "solutions," at least five of which would completely disable your computer if applied. Two of the eleven were obviously deliberately malicious, but the others were apparently just stupid. There were only three threads where anyone claiming "Microsoft credentials" gave vague, conflicting, and mostly unusable "answers," but I have no way of verifying that the three "Microsoft" people were actually knowldegeable Microsoft advisors.

Also, in the same post:

(Does anyone at Micro$oft ever, ever join up the dots when it comes to customer psychology?) (Didn't think so...)

The basic problem with "the new Microsoft" is that they actually did make an attempt to do this. Microsoft observed that they got a lot of "dumb questions" from users, and decided to completely redesign everything. They brought in large groups of users and gave them lots of toys to play with, and their "psychologists" and "efficiency analysts" observed what the "users" did, and tried to make the system "more responsive" to their sampling of deliberately "inexperienced users."

Since they intentionally excluded experienced users from their test groups, the test subjects didn't even know of the existence of most of the most essential things the programs could do for experienced users, Microsoft concluded that those things weren't very important and they were obliterated, removed, hidden, and obscured in the "new systems." To avoid confusing anyone, they also removed the previous help files, and replaced them with "visit our web chat site."

Microsoft intentionally attempted to make all of their products "more idiot friendly" and in doing so made them suitable only for "beginner (idiot) users." They intended to widen their "user base," and in doing so they accidentally(?) excluded much of their existing base of professional users.

From a purely commercial view, they probably were "correct," since the vast majority of new users aren't really interested in doing much beyond "twits" and "tweets" and pasting chain letters to each other.

Two years or so ago, news reports (confirmed by "softies" we know) indicated that no senior Microsoft managers associated with Vista remained at Microsoft. We don't know how many left in disgust or how many fled in fear.

John