Archive for July, 2007
A Few Minor Changes
Jul 30th
You may have noticed a few changes on the site. I've replaced WordPress with Drupal. Not that I think one is better than the other, I just needed Drupal's CMS abilities as I'm going to be adding more than just a blog to this site.
I've also added a few new links and will be adding some more static content as well as posting more in the coming days.
Your Average User is SOL
Jul 19th
It is indeed dark times in computing.
A lady called our tech support line and was wanting help with Windows Mail. She wasn't a customer, and had just simply searched for Windows Mail on the web and no doubt ran across our articles on configuring Windows Mail for our hosting services. Quite a few people do that, especially for Mozilla Thunderbird.
Unfortunately we can't assist people with their computer problems unless they are our customers. As much as we'd like to sometimes, we can't because:
- We don't know what info they should use to check their mail (ie. mail server, etc.) since we don't administer the mail servers that they're using
- They're not our customer, these questions should be taken to their ISP, host, help desk, local computer technician
What's more, calling us about e-mail issues when you don't use our service is the equivalent of calling your phone company complaining that your cable box is putting funny lines on your TV set and demanding that they help you fix it.
In this particular case the lady had really gotten the runaround, from Microsoft, her ISP, and several other places. I can understand the frustration, but other than Microsoft and her ISP, no one is obligated (nor really should they) assist her for free. Microsoft turning her away was shameful, because the problem with the software in all likelihood (we know Vista and its bundled software has many issues currently) and not some server setting.
I see ISP's turning away customers all of the time for problems if they're not directly related to their service. I suppose I can understand that, but some of the ISP's tech support staff will go as far as Google the product themselves and find companies like ours and have them call us, or perhaps even “transfer” them to us. This is horrible, because it implies to their customer that we're going to be able to help them, just like we were a subsidiary of said ISP. Multiple ISP's have sent their customers to us for support when we have nothing to do with them.
As you can see, the end user who really doesn't know who's responsibility it is to help them is just completely out of luck and stuck in the middle. For us to say, “we can't help you with that” sounds like another cop out, even though we really don't have the specific information to help them out anyway. I completely understand that. However, both I and a few other people on our staff have been yelled at because of this, and that's wrong.
The lady in question hung up on our staff member when they suggested that she obtain help from a local computer technician/guru. I think that was a perfectly reasonable person to refer her to, as her problem was either software or possibly even hardware related, and no amount of phone troubleshooting would have likely fixed it.
In the end though, what sympathy I had for this lady (I was honestly considering trying to help her when I heard about it) vanished when she rudely hung up on our staff member. I understand the frustration, but taking it out on us, who are not even involved in it, is not fair.
I've learned a few things from this particular incident (and in contemplation of the past times this has happened):
- Most ISP's technical support is very eager to pass the problem to anyone, even people who aren't even involved.
- Microsoft makes products that it doesn't support of sometimes questionable quality. Shame on them. I see why some folks are considering / switching to Mac
- Local computer businesses that provide on-site and carry in service have a real market here – they need to start reaching out to these stranded users.
In summary, the average user is SOL.
Life After Vista
Jul 13th
The reviews have been out for some time on Vista, and things aren't really looking good for it.
While there have been some positive one, most point out its flaws, undoubtedly a result of it being pushed out the door way before it was ready,and the two rewrites it endured. I find myself recommending that they do NOT buy a computer with Vista installed on it unless it is a high end machine. But with the pressure that Microsoft puts on the market, it's hard for computer makers to include anything else but Microsoft's “latest and greatest”.
Some have said, “It was just like this after XP came out. Everyone said Windows 2000 was fine for them, why do we need XP.” But that's not entirely true. Windows XP's launch problems were plagued by the same problems Vista is having with some prominent hardware vendors, but not to the extent that Vista has endured. Vista requires twice the hardware (in some cases, 3 times as much) to run as smoothly as XP does, and while some things like SuperFetch actually make Vista feel faster than XP, in most intensive applications frame rates and similar performance scores go down.
Chris Pirillo ended up going back to XP after a decent stint of using Vista, and while he's perhaps been one of the more vocal switch-backer's (is that even a word?), there's been a steady chorus of people who have been uninstalling it.
The fact that quite a few people are uninstalling it and going back to whatever they were using before isn't as interesting as the length of time people typically go before reinstalling it. In most cases (including mine) I had it running for about 2 months before going back. In my case, I had to, Vista's networking became hosed and no amount of fiddling by someone who's had a Windows computer around for 14+ years would fix it. If Vista was so repusive people would obviously only spend a few days with it and go back, but it's not. Some of the enhancements to the UI are improvements over XP, and going back to XP makes you miss them. XP truly needed some of the things that are in Vista, perhaps as a SP3, but not as an entirely new operating system.
I believe Microsoft has built a large enough empire and market share that it can survive one lemon like Vista. But I'm not so sure it can survive two of them.
I'm fortunately isolated from this to some extent because the large chunk of my work is on Linux systems. The computer I use to access those systems then becomes less important. But I still am asked what I recommend in computers from family and friends, and I am ashamed to say that there aren't really any viable Windows options out there at the moment, and perhaps not for quite a while. I'm tempted to tell them to just install Ubuntu, and for the vast majority who simply check their e-mail, surf the web, and listen to a bit of music, this would be fine. But I know that Linux as a desktop doesn't work 100% yet either.
Which brings us to what will life look like in the PC world after Vista. I was having a conversation with Charles at Sproutit and we discussed what Microsoft should do (but will never do) for the next version of Windows. He suggested that Microsoft should focus on improving its user interface and end-user experience, and turn its kernel (the underpinning of the operating system) over to an open source project like Linux or FreeBSD. In doing so, Microsoft would accomplish several big things:
- Let themselves focus on the front end without having to worry as much about security and reliability
- Save money and development time
- Present to the user a more stable and secure product
- Gain the respect of the open source community (at least to a certain extent), which it probably wasn't after anyway, but it's nice to have
Can you imagine? An commercially available operating system with UNIX at its core? Of course you can, Apple's doing it with Mac OS X right now! Most know I'm no fan boy of Apple, and I strongly believe in the PC architecture, but I'll have to admit, when it comes to the core of the OS, turning it over to open-source technology, specifically UNIX, was what saved (or perhaps staved off for a while) Apple's imminent destruction.
But, Microsoft's not facing that kind of life or death scenario, and thus doesn't feel now that it need make a drastic decision like that. They probably never will. But, I do predict that if another operating system like Vista is released, the domination of Windows on the desktop will come to and end, making way for massive gains in demand for Linux and Mac.
Until then, it's business as usual I suppose. Most people will keep using XP to get their work done, until things work right in Vista. That day may come a month from now, or a year from now, but Microsoft just has the numbers to let that disappointing fact slide for now.