[Gllug] Take a look at my photos on Facebook

[Christopher Hunter]

On Thu, 2009-11-05 at 11:10 +0000, Peter Cannon wrote:

> Hang on, did Office crash or was it Windows 7?

Win 7 fell over.  Probably taken down by "Office".  It fell over to the
point that it needed a reboot.

> We've now done 487 installs of Windows 7 Pro and Ultimate and not one
> has had an 'Office' problem, yes there have been some glitches with some
> 3rd party apps but that's to be expected you cant blame W7 for that.

Is that the "Special friend of Ballmer Edition"?  Everybody else (other
than you) has had significant problems with Windows 7.

> Again not broken anything of my customers what 'facilities' are broken?
> I'm intrigued.

One of the machines had basic networking crippled.  That's pretty much a
showstopper.  Saving files to USB devices is either horribly slow or
doesn't work at all.  It's just a shinier version of the same old
brokenware.

> But you don't see a webpage just a pinging progress bar? Methinks this
> is a classic 'user interface error'

Nope.  I wasn't prepared to wait for hours.  I have an important job to
do.  I can't afford to waste time hanging about for a poor website.

> >>  You clearly state later that your network failed which means you had 
> >> Internet access so I'm a tad confused.
> > 
> > We started with working networking on both machines.  Shortly after
> > "activation" the networking failed on one of them.
> 
> But 'Activation' has no effect whatsoever on your network capabilities
> you're doing the classic customer comment "It worked fine till you
> touched it" Activation does not break your connectivity period.

It certainly did on one of the two identical machines!

> Interesting, it was good enough for everybody until the 'freebie'
> crashing crap came along. 

No it wasn't.  The first complaints started on the day of release.  One
strange effect is the way in which it gets slower and slower with each
reboot.

> Have you seen the complaints about Karmic?

Yes.  Probably because it was rushed out to comply with their stated 6
monthly release cycle.  This was probably a serious mistake.  'Round our
office it's called "Krashing Koala"

> > No.  It's an abysmal, overpriced, bloated mess of a product, which still
> > contains Cutler's undocumented, hacked together demonstration kernel and
> > the same broken IP stack that its always had.
> 
> Over priced? wtf students can get it for £30 it costs a pathetic £147
> for Ultimate and a measly £72 for the Home edition

MS should pay their users to have it!  ANY price is too high.

> http://www.misco.co.uk/applications/factfinder/search.asp?querytext=windows+7+home&image1.x=0&image1.y=0
> 
> >> Is it a threat to Linux? I doubt it.
> > 
> > No.  It's certainly no threat to Linux, but is a serious threat to
> > Microsoft.  I'm tempted to run a book on how long they last...
> 
> I'll take that bet please what time scale you offering? Of course you'll
> have to pay out to my great, great, great, great grand children

Not according to my ex-colleagues in Redmond.  They're all fearful for
their jobs, many have had their pay frozen and many more have had to
take pay cuts.  The culture within the corporation is now such that it
doesn't actually pay you to do any work - if you're seen at plenty of
meetings, you're seen as "doing your job".  The fact that they hold
meetings to arrange meetings, and that it's possible for most staff to
spend their entire "working time" in meetings, it's astonishing that
they get anything released at all.

> I never want to see Microsoft go away they are the benchmark we gauge
> our popularity against, without them there would be very little
> incentive 'to do better' after a year or so complacency would set in if
> it was just Linux and Mac.

Not at all.  The void would quickly be filled by Google or whoever.
Replacement of MS would only be good for the wider world of computing!

> Slinging dirt at the opposition is a poor salesman's tactic and shows an
> inability to promote your product or service as a quality alternative,
> explaining the similarities with our products to theirs, and
> demonstrating the reasons ours is better than theirs is a far more
> effective and professional way.

Maybe.  However, I say as I see, and Windows 7 is just another broken
product in a long line of broken products.  It has all the problems of
the older versions, still has partially broken networking, and being
closed-source allows MS to get away with truly abysmal code.

I'm not losing any sleep over how good Windows 7 actually is!

C.


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