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Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a “Windows” user-agent (2016)

answers.microsoft.com

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Re: Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a “Windows” user-agent (2016)

#101
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely. The guy would've probably gotten fired if he was honest: "that almost looks like it was done on purpose to force people to use Windows", but he could have avoided completely dismissing the guy. For instance, by saying: "thanks for reporting this, I'll pass this to the tech team. In the meantime you can keep using your solution if it solves the problem for you". It's probably hard for a huge company to giv…

"thanks for reporting this, I'll pass this to the tech team" It's not something they can say. The product is unsupported and the "tech team" won't care.

Doesn't mean they can't file the issue. Then the team just checks the box on their ticket solution that says "WONT FIX" or "NOT SUPPORTED" and moves on with their lives.

Customers would feel respected, the workaround would be found and used, and no one would feel ignored. It would leave a customer happier than telling them they don't warrant interest.

Re: Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a “Windows” user-agent (2016)

#102
post #27
post #9

Unhelpful catch-all responses that don't display a shred of effort or care are the bane of my customer support experiences. Nothing hurts my opinion of a company like being brushed off like a bug.

"Not supported" is an acceptable first half of a response, but all you really have to add is "I'll pass this on to the tech team" and the tone changes entirely.

But they are deliberately throttling this, in an effort to get people to have to use Windows.

Re: Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a “Windows” user-agent (2016)

#103
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no direct understanding but I have a hypothesis; - different generated html / js depending on user agent (UA) - bug fixes are rolled out on a UA by UA basis - bug fixes have been rolled out for Windows and Mac (supported) - but not for the "generic" HTML / JS output If this is true it will mean that anything other than the supported platforms will fall further behind as time goes by.

> depending on user agent (UA) This would be very amateurish. The right way to do it is to check browser capabilities. User agents can be easily manipulated and are considered unreliable.

And not every browser bug is detectable via feature detection. I've seen plenty of render specific bugs that were only able to be targeted via user agent parsing. Not it isn't perfect... but it's often the better of the options available.

Re: Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a “Windows” user-agent (2016)

#104
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely. The guy would've probably gotten fired if he was honest: "that almost looks like it was done on purpose to force people to use Windows", but he could have avoided completely dismissing the guy. For instance, by saying: "thanks for reporting this, I'll pass this to the tech team. In the meantime you can keep using your solution if it solves the problem for you". It's probably hard for a huge company to giv…

I very much doubt this was intentional. If this was a small company targeting unsavvy users to try and upsell them something, sure. In this case the payout might be worth the fallout once people inevitably figure it out. In this case, I doubt someone thought "hey, let's mess with Linux users and serve them a bunch of garbage, it'll encourage them to move to Windows".

Any thought that starts with, "hey let's mess with Linux users..." Isn't very likely to be a good thought

Re: Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a “Windows” user-agent (2016)

#105
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely. The guy would've probably gotten fired if he was honest: "that almost looks like it was done on purpose to force people to use Windows", but he could have avoided completely dismissing the guy. For instance, by saying: "thanks for reporting this, I'll pass this to the tech team. In the meantime you can keep using your solution if it solves the problem for you". It's probably hard for a huge company to giv…

I very much doubt this was intentional. If this was a small company targeting unsavvy users to try and upsell them something, sure. In this case the payout might be worth the fallout once people inevitably figure it out. In this case, I doubt someone thought "hey, let's mess with Linux users and serve them a bunch of garbage, it'll encourage them to move to Windows".

then how else would such behaviour be explainable? I thought about reasonable explanations but i doubt a little background process that notices a unsupported user agent would act up like this

Re: Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a “Windows” user-agent (2016)

#106
I was managing a Google Apps account when I had a problem with Google Groups I didn't know how to solve. Picked up the phone and called the support number, and within minutes I was talking to a super nice guy who helped me out. That was the best customer support I've ever experienced.

I have no affiliation with Google and I still think the original issue I had with Google Groups was due to some sloppy UI-work on their part, but that support call makes me happy just thinking about it.

Re: Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a “Windows” user-agent (2016)

#107
post #105
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I very much doubt this was intentional. If this was a small company targeting unsavvy users to try and upsell them something, sure. In this case the payout might be worth the fallout once people inevitably figure it out. In this case, I doubt someone thought "hey, let's mess with Linux users and serve them a bunch of garbage, it'll encourage them to move to Windows".

then how else would such behaviour be explainable? I thought about reasonable explanations but i doubt a little background process that notices a unsupported user agent would act up like this

I don't know if MS has earned the benefit of my doubt, but it's conceivable that the software could have implemented platform-specific behavior or optimizations that ended up slowing things down for some reason.

Re: Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a “Windows” user-agent (2016)

#109
post #9

Unhelpful catch-all responses that don't display a shred of effort or care are the bane of my customer support experiences. Nothing hurts my opinion of a company like being brushed off like a bug.

Whenever I google a problem with a microsoft product, and the search ends up on one of these answer.microsoft.com pages, I always click on the link with an enormous feeling of dread. I don't think I've ever seen a usable answer on that site.

I completely agree.

Most of the time I get the impression the person writing it is a employee who is reading someone else's notes, has no idea what the answer even is, and then does the best to cover it up by using abstractions, off topic insight and buzz words.

Sorry Microsoft just my opinion regarding this one area. Room to improve maybe ?

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