221–230 of 381 posts
OTOH, you software is terrible. Completely FUBAR.
My suggestion: keep the hardware division, abandon the software.
(burn, karma, burn)
Microsoft's advertising still doesn't do it for me. Frankly, most commercials makes me think more about their lameness than the product. The exception is Xbox ads. As 'rakkhi' noted, the Xbox product line is actually great, and I think its advertising is one reason for its success. Xbox ads, everything down to the cool logo/sound thing in each one, make me think about the product , instead of making me feel sorry for…
I think they need to really find a better way to differentiate themselves from the competition, it doesn't have to be feature based as OS's have been able to do most of everything the average used would want for a long time, but rather the feeling people get from using it and how it makes things simpler for them.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/257757/en-us
There are a lot of use cases for automatically generating Office documents. There are so many developers who want to use your products that way. Why not embrace them and use them to drive additional sales? We are actually doing server-side automation of Word right now in an internal work flow application — even though it's unsupported — because there's no good alternative for what we need to accomplish. But it involves some ugly kluges and when things break we can't call up Microsoft support.
Log in as Administrator -> Install an update to the machine (Why?)
Reboot the machine (Why?)
Log back in as Administrator again -> Install IE
Reboot the machine again (Why?)
Log in as the user that users the machine. Launch IE: "Hello would you like to participate in BLAH BLAH BLAH?. (Why are you asking me this? I just want to go to youtube and watch a video!)
[Yes] [No]
Compare this to Chrome, or Firefox or Opera.
Log in as Administrator -> click on executable -> Next Next Next -> Launch Chrome -> Go to youtube -> Done.
There are things that would make my life a lot easier too, but this is very small picture stuff (but I think it reflects a bigger problem.). These tools may already exist, but I don't know about them...which is a failure on the part of microsoft:
I want a tool that will automatically audit my MS office license keys for me. Scan my network, tell me who has what keys.
An asset management tool in general would be nice. Scan my network, give me back a list of all of my machines, What user is currently logged into that machine, and what its IP address is. Yes, this is already possible using a few other tools, but it would be nice to have it all in one place (again, if this exists already, please tell me).
Other things that would be great:
Give me a centralized repository of windows ISOs and Office installs. You can get these things, yes, but it involves jumping through a bunch of hoops. Just give me microsoft.com/downloads and present me with copies of your OS, and office. I'm not saying give away product keys (obviously), just media.
Btw, what you guys did in Russia this week was really really cool. I actually had a lengthy conversation with a friend of mine about how awesome of you that was. In all honesty, you guys are doing a lot of really really amazing things right now. I am still in disbelief at how I could just email some very nice woman at Microsoft Research, ask her for a peppermill, and have one show up at my door a few days later. That kind of stuff warms my heart. So does making the N-GRAM data from bing available to students for free. That type of stuff is awesome, and that is the type of stuff that makes me want to support you guys. Keep that up.
Thanks, Ryan
In regards to IE9: please please please make this easier to install. Currently this is what I need to do to upgrade to IE8: Log in as Administrator -> Install an update to the machine (Why?) Reboot the machine (Why?) Log back in as Administrator again -> Install IE Reboot the machine again (Why?) Log in as the user that users the machine. Launch IE: "Hello would you like to participate in BLAH BLAH BLAH?. (Why are yo…
Just let me use the damn browser.
Please abandon IE only interfaces for your enterprise products. Having a fully functioning web interface for outlook web access or sharepoint shouldn't be a big deal, but it is a constant problem, you cant force people to use IE, embrace the alternatives. Added features are not always good, we know Office is a cash cow, but it is also heavy as hell, offer a slim down office suite, not in software, but in features, or…
Some points: - It's annoying in this day and age to be forced into using the entire MS Stack when I need to work with one specific technology. For example: if I want to test a web app on various versions of IE, I have to run Windows. OK fine, even though IE is the only browser that is tied to one OS, I'll let that go. However, if I want to use the Microsoft-provided free MS Virtual Machine images, I have to run them…
MS needs to really decide how much longer they want to push an OS that is based on Windows/DOS heritage and not unix You know the "Windows/DOS" stuff in NT is an emulation layer, right? It's known as WoW, Windows on Windows. The NT kernel is the work of Dave Cutler, of DEC VMS fame, and it is actually very, very good (form your own opinion about what has been layered on top of it).
Some points: - It's annoying in this day and age to be forced into using the entire MS Stack when I need to work with one specific technology. For example: if I want to test a web app on various versions of IE, I have to run Windows. OK fine, even though IE is the only browser that is tied to one OS, I'll let that go. However, if I want to use the Microsoft-provided free MS Virtual Machine images, I have to run them…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
MS needs to really decide how much longer they want to push an OS that is based on Windows/DOS heritage and not unix You know the "Windows/DOS" stuff in NT is an emulation layer, right? It's known as WoW, Windows on Windows. The NT kernel is the work of Dave Cutler, of DEC VMS fame, and it is actually very, very good (form your own opinion about what has been layered on top of it).
So, it's a VMS heritage ;-)
Please abandon IE only interfaces for your enterprise products. Having a fully functioning web interface for outlook web access or sharepoint shouldn't be a big deal, but it is a constant problem, you cant force people to use IE, embrace the alternatives. Added features are not always good, we know Office is a cash cow, but it is also heavy as hell, offer a slim down office suite, not in software, but in features, or…