Vista - Today will be a bit rough for connectivity - Logon will be slow.

Heads up friends,

We took some drastic measures last night to resume stability.

The side effect of the fixes last night is that most people were logged off
the system.

Your clients will automatically logon slowly.

We are getting to the root causes of the issues and are working very hard to
fix this.

Please be patient. We are very sorry for any inconvenience this is causing
you.

Anton or I will send updates daily.

Thank-you
-Mohammed

While I appreciate the "heads up" it still doesn't seem that Microsoft is
doing enough quickly enough to resolve the issues. This has been going on
since Sat. 11/10. That is totally unacceptable. I find it hard to believe
that a company the size of Microsoft would have this much trouble finding a
solution. Maybe it is because FS is a free program and is not high enough on
your priority list. You keep saying to be patient.... just how long to
expect people to be patient. This has created a hardship for my business. I
am terribly disgusted with MS and FS.

Kathy

"Mohammed Samji [MSFT]" wrote:

As of 11/16 4 PM Beijing time Folder Share is non-functional again.

"Kathy M." wrote:

Remember that the infrastructure was built by a one-man company and MS bought
it for the technology and not necessarily for the FolderShare service as it
existed. Since it broke it may take more than a few days to fix. You can't
ask nine women to make a baby in a month just because you want it now. Some
things just take time.

FYI, it is harming my business too, but you get more flies with honey than
with lye.

"Kathy M." wrote:

I understand all that, but 6 days of being down!!! That is just ridiculous.



"Mike Schinkel" wrote:

I spent a few years at MS, so I can offer the following insight for what it's
worth:

1. The product is free which, unfortunately, means the product group doesn't
get the unlimited resources you'd like to imagine. I'd guess that the group
actively working on this problem numbers less than 10, and likely less than 5.

2. Microsoft labels products as a "Beta" for a reason. While we would do
our best to support Beta users, a product is considered Beta until MS decrees
that it's ready for widescale use. One of the downsides of a Beta is that it
may have hidden issues that cause problems for mission-critical
settings...like week-long connectivity issues that lead to seriously degraded
service.

3. There's a huge difference between an interesting piece of software
released by a relatively unknown company (i.e. the original Foldershare) and
a piece of software that has the distribution potential of something attached
to the Microsoft Live Service bundle. It seems entirely likely that the
original system simply couldn't withstand the load and there are always going
to be growing pains as you bring a bigger, better system on line.

4. The people I worked with in the product groups at Microsoft were without
question the most dedicated and professional engineers I've ever worked with,
and I've been in this industry for a while. If it's taken a week to remedy
this issue, then it was probably caused by a serious set of problems that
couldn't be solved in an afternoon.

So it's absolutely within your right to be frustrated as h*** and switch to
a different product, and if you need this functionality right now then it's
probably the right decision. But I'd at least have faith that Mohammed and
the rest of the Foldershare team is doing everything humanly possible to get
it working as soon as they can.

Ryan

"Kathy M." wrote:

I agree with Kathy M. totally. If Microsoft doesn't have the manpower to keep
this service running without 48 hour (!!!!) interruptions in service, then
perhaps this service is not ready to go live yet, and I should look elsewhere
for solutions.

The fact that this service is free and "in beta" is no excuse, really. I
would point to examples like Google, who are able to produce functional,
high-quality online products even when they're in beta (see Gmail, Google
Reader, etc.). Perhaps Microsoft should revise their requirements for an
online beta service to be publicly accessible? Right now your product is
doing me more harm then good, given the sporadic connections, the multiple
copies of non-synced files, etc. It has also shaken my confidence in using
any of MSFT's online services.

-Mike


"Mohammed Samji [MSFT]" wrote:

"Ryan" <Ryan@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:9F5EACF7-E498-44B5-BFD4-05EDE3C42BB5@xxxxxxIf it was a non beta product when MS bought it and people paid for it, then
they bought the agreement that company made with its customers.

If they want to make changes that cause it to become unstable they should do
that in a separate environment that is chosen by willing guinea pigs. Those
who need it for mission critical should have been able to stay with the old
working version until the new one was ready for primetime.

That said, I am not one of those original customers. But if I was, I'd be
ready to kill someone.