I've encountered three types of viewers in this set of newsgroups:
General public, most of which have little or no concern for how they treat
others, with the rare individual who attempts to rise above the fray and
actually help. This group of people seldom distinguish their problems to the
rightful owners, choosing instead to blame any and all.
MVPs, a slight improvement over the general public, they volunteer their
help and seem to have more experience at finding what is already out there
regarding your problems and rarely offer anything beyond that knowing that
their suggestions rarely fit all cases. Like the general public, this group
quickly becomes base if confronted.
Microsoft. Yep, they are there and I've only encountered two of them, but
they remain quiet until the problem you have is definitely known to reside
within the Microsoft code. At this point, those individuals go all out to
contact you and work with you to determine and fix an actual bug. They value
their job, just as you, and retain their opinions of you to themselves while
fixing your problem.
So, does anyone who can make an actual change to the product hear what is
said in these newsgroups? Yes.
Where do I fit... General Public. I've attacked others needlessly and
attempted to help. But, when I encountered actual MS employees who went out
of their way to help and found them to value their work, as I do mine, I
suddenly felt chagrined over some of my prior posts. I'm here to help, if I
can. Flame away, if necessary... I'll just wait in the wings until I'm able
to help.
"meg99az" <marcg99999 at aol dot com> wrote in message
news:1175237624_10245@sp6iad.superfeed.net...
>I have my first new machine with Vista and Office 2007.
> They are usability disasters as far as I am concerned.
> It seeems as though an awful lot of development effort went into bells and
> whistles, most of it form over substance, while dismantling many of the
> most
> important usability and productivity features.
>
> I know that new OSes and interfaces need time to sink in, but these new
> programs aren't just new - they are legitimately worse - dysfunctional for
> genuine productivity, a return to the stone ages. Seems like that on the
> next major OS release, we will be back to swapping floppies or using
> cassette recorders to load the OS.
>
> I hate to complain without offering up thoughtful details and suggestions.
> But before I do, my question is this:
>
> Does anyone from MS read these NG's or take them seriously? Does this all
> fall on deaf ears and arrogant disregard for customers, or is there
> someone
> at MS who takes this all seriously? If not, where else does one go to
> register thoughtful feedback?
>
> If someone is listening, I just might be a regular participant here.
>
> ---------------------
>
> Here's something to chew on:
>
> Remember back when - circa 1985 or thereabouts? IBM and MS were
> developing
> a radical new GUI OS: OS/2. And, IBM had come out with its next
> generation
> of PCs with a new incompatible bus architecture ("MCA" as I recall). In
> one
> fell swoop, IBM ticked off its entire customer base, by creating a new
> generation of machines that would force corporations to trash their entire
> old investments and retrain their entire staffs. MS took care of its
> customers, promising slow steady changes and backward compatibility, and
> the
> Wintel system won by a landslide, and the mighty IBM was out. Now, with
> MS
> concerned by Google and Linux and Apple nipping at its heels in various
> ways, the Vista / Office 2007 debut reminds me of the IBM - MCA - OS/2
> debacle. MS has never been a warm fuzzy patron of its customers, but this
> just seems to be total disregard for how millions of people world wide use
> and depend on their products. Unless Vista Service Packs fix the bugs,
> the
> profound lack of customization options, and the Windows Explorer and
> Office
> toolbars disasters, I will keep using XP for quite a long time. This
> might
> be just the incentive that someone needs to develop a more robust Linux
> that
> can support MS apps, because the sense I get is that enough people are
> sufficiently upset to be wishing for a good alternative.
>
> - meg -
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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