Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just MS up to its old (classic) tricks.
Doesn't Hangouts only work properly on Chrome?
[deleted]
Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a “Windows” user-agent (2016)
181–190 of 492 posts
Re: Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a “Windows” user-agent (2016)
#182Re: Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a “Windows” user-agent (2016)
#183Unhelpful 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.
As the former head of a customer support department, I can tell you that the most important aspect of communication with a customer is empathy. Even more than expertise, if you can demonstrate that you care about their problem and will get to the bottom of it, the encounter will most likely result in customer retention.
Really? Because nothing grinds my gears more than fake sympathy/empathy coupled with an inability/unwillingness to understand my problem and an urgency to get me off the phone. Which is pretty much how customer support works.
What I want from customer support is for someone to take the time to understand why I am calling. Not to pat me on the head and tell me things will be alright while urgently trying to get rid of me.
Re: Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a “Windows” user-agent (2016)
#184They can't be throttling based on user-agent... right? I thought this was the New Microsoft. Any other hypotheses?
I thought this was the New Microsoft. Any other hypotheses?
Yes: there is no single 'New Microsoft'. I don't even know where the term originated. Instead there are a couple of departments within MS which have been heading in a new direction (see the open-sourcing, VSCode, ...) but others seem still to be stuck in . Mismanagement maybe?
Re: Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a “Windows” user-agent (2016)
#185"Don't assume bad intentions over neglect and misunderstanding." - Hanlon's razor
I worked as a Microsoft employee on the xbox.com website from 2007-2010. We didn't officially support any browsers on Linux because it represented We supplied a list of officially supported browsers to the customer support team. Any bugs on non-supported browsers would never get reported back to our team, so we'd never hear about them. The support team did their job.
This is how pretty much every company in the history of ever works.
Re: Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a “Windows” user-agent (2016)
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
I found that interesting too. I'm not familiar with office 365, but isn't it web based? So why does it matter what browser or OS you use?
My office 365 Home install is not cloud based in any way as far as I can tell. All the 'traditional' office programs such as Excel and Word are installed locally. There may be some cloud integration to OneDrive or something similar, but I haven't used that. It is nothing like Google Docs.
That's probably Office 2016. Office 365 is definitely a cloud based service which includes licenses for the desktop Office software.
Re: Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a “Windows” user-agent (2016)
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 don't think I've ever seen a usable answer on that site. At least not from a Microsoft employee. Sadly, the majority of posts from Microsoft employees I have seen basically repeat the problem description, followed by "Did I understand that correctly?", sometimes people get generic advice like reboot their computer, make sure their system has all available updates installed, etc.
Saw someone call them out once as giving out "grandma-level advice", I felt it was accurate, no offense to grandmas of course.
Re: Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a “Windows” user-agent (2016)
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a linux user since the 90s, googling for basic issues on Windows is an unmitigated disaster. For linux I have always got a correct answer.
As a Windows user since the 90ss, when I tried using Linux for a week or two on a spare machine while my primary laptop was in the shop... Trying to find any information on Linux that didn't involve books' worth of text saying 'compile this', 'write this program in C', or 'do this incredibly arcane commandline operation' became an exercise in futility. Whenever I have a specific problem in Windows, I can Google it an…
> 'do this incredibly arcane commandline operation'
I have seen my fair share of this in the Windows world, too. Edit registry keys you never even heard of, use that (mostly undocumented) command invocation (I'm look at you, SharePoint!), edit that XML file that sits in a place where it does not even make sense...
On Linux (and other Unix systems), at least you have man pages, on Windows I cannot recall a single instance where the builtin help system has actually helped me. I mean, even MS-freaking-DOS had a reasonably useful builtin help.
With Linux, at least it gets better once you get the hang of it. Microsoft's sorry excuse for documentation is (mostly) a joke. (The exception are developer tools - the documentation on T-SQL and the .Net framework classes is fairly good, even though it's such a mess that it's easier to Google for specific entries than using the TOC or the builtin search... once I find what I was looking for, I do usually find a helpful answer to my question.)
(To be fair, when I first started using Linux, I found it incredibly strange, complicated, confusing and intimidating; within the first six months of using Linux, I was this close to literally throwing my PC out the window on no less than three occasions. So I know the frustration you speak of.)
Re: Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a “Windows” user-agent (2016)
#189I 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 thei…
To be fair, if you've ever used paid support from Microsoft, you'd have gotten equal treatment. The couple times I had to call them back in the early 00's, I got super-technical, friendly people who got to the root of the problem right away.
One even taught me to catch a Windows error via remote debugging on a different machine. I leveled up because of a support call.
Re: Onedrive is slow on Linux but fast with a “Windows” user-agent (2016)
#190Google is doing this with many of their products. And has been for many, many years. Limiting features, blocking services, etc... based solely on user agent.
Any source for that claim?
Try https://meet.google.com in any browser other than Chrome and you'll get a message saying your browser isn't supported.
If you setup Firefox to use a newer version of Chrome user agent, the page will at least load. Seems like they are using user agent instead of feature detection to limit usage.