Vista - Event Viewer is Essentially a Collosal Failure

Seeing one of the Windows/Mac commercials

http://www.apple.com/getamac/ads/

particularly, the one whose picture is enlarged in the center, reminds me of
something I have noticed in Vista for a long time entiltled "Computer Cart"
that is appearing on major networks in the US today.

It reminds me that Event Viewer is not only nearly worthless in Vista, but
it is substantive proof that the developers and PMs on the team need to get
outside onto a real street and talk to real people.

I have always recommended Event Viewer frequently as a potential place to
fish for errors that might not show up on the desktop, or might be
particularly quick so that you can't see them, or might be particularly
cryptic. After almost two years with Vista, I have concluded that no one on
the team that works with it at Redmond ever gets out doors onto a real
street with real people.

Many many of the messages say precisely nothing. More than 90% of the links
say that there is no solution yet. This is for problems the magnitude of an
IE crash, or a major crash or an unexpected shutdown.

You have to wonder if people who know how to use Event Viewer and have read
the blogs on it find it next to worthless, how helpful it's going to be to
the bell shaped curve of Vista buyers if they know it exists at all.

I conclude they are just as well off not knowing it exists. MSFT has a very
long way to go in the erra of Ray Ozzie hopping jets to tout the virtues of
Web 2.0 in getting real time error messages translated for people.

In Vista they continue to ignorantly put these messages into ectopic,
metastatic logs that the average user is not going to find in the first
place, let alone interpret, and I'd like to bet that the average man or
woman in a super market checkout line doesn't understand HEX or have HEX
interpretation tools the way rocket hopping millionare Charles Somogyi does.
The reason I make this analogy is that MSFT takes the tac that people
understand cryptic error messages hidden in far flung logs. Even when they
can find the logs, they aren't going to unerstand the cryptic messages in
the logs.

Why do you think someone like Darrell Gorter or Vinny Flynt at Redmond asks
you to send the logs? It's because they know damn well you aren't going to
be able to either interpret them or have the tools to do so, and there is
nothing in Vista to teach you how to do so or intepret them.

Many of the error messages are written in Hexidecimal. MSFT Computer
Science graduates need tools and
training for even to decipher them. "Suzie Supermarket Chauffeur the Kids
in the Family SUV" isn't about to be able to.

Apple has an appropriate commercial. The Windows character who also
appears on Jon Stewart says he doesn't know what the error messages mean.
Neither do 99+% of MSFT end users nor some of the IT Pros/CTOs who manage
enterprise IT departments.

MSFT's approach to error messages is so out of touch with reality that it
would be like a medical doctor spouting some of the more abstruse/essoteric
medical terms, labs, and lingo to a patient without being available to make
any real world common sense explanation for the patient to put into use.

MSFT needs to jump on this problem that they have done little constructive
to correct in nearly 26 years. They didn't improve it in Vista.

CH

Quite frankly the event viewer is not for average folks but for us
geeks. That's one of the reasons in a network setting you can use it to
view another computers event viewer.

Event logs are there in case something happens.

The rest of the time, folks don't even know, nor even care that it's
under the hood.

Patients go to specialists when there is something wrong. We don't do
DIY surgery.

Chad Harris wrote:
> Seeing one of the Windows/Mac commercials
>
> http://www.apple.com/getamac/ads/
>
> particularly, the one whose picture is enlarged in the center, reminds
> me of
> something I have noticed in Vista for a long time entiltled "Computer Cart"
> that is appearing on major networks in the US today.
>
> It reminds me that Event Viewer is not only nearly worthless in Vista, but
> it is substantive proof that the developers and PMs on the team need to get
> outside onto a real street and talk to real people.
>
> I have always recommended Event Viewer frequently as a potential place
> to fish for errors that might not show up on the desktop, or might be
> particularly quick so that you can't see them, or might be particularly
> cryptic. After almost two years with Vista, I have concluded that no
> one on the team that works with it at Redmond ever gets out doors onto a
> real street with real people.
>
> Many many of the messages say precisely nothing. More than 90% of the
> links say that there is no solution yet. This is for problems the
> magnitude of an IE crash, or a major crash or an unexpected shutdown.
>
> You have to wonder if people who know how to use Event Viewer and have read
> the blogs on it find it next to worthless, how helpful it's going to be to
> the bell shaped curve of Vista buyers if they know it exists at all.
>
> I conclude they are just as well off not knowing it exists. MSFT has a
> very long way to go in the erra of Ray Ozzie hopping jets to tout the
> virtues of Web 2.0 in getting real time error messages translated for
> people.
>
> In Vista they continue to ignorantly put these messages into ectopic,
> metastatic logs that the average user is not going to find in the first
> place, let alone interpret, and I'd like to bet that the average man or
> woman in a super market checkout line doesn't understand HEX or have HEX
> interpretation tools the way rocket hopping millionare Charles Somogyi
> does. The reason I make this analogy is that MSFT takes the tac that
> people understand cryptic error messages hidden in far flung logs. Even
> when they can find the logs, they aren't going to unerstand the cryptic
> messages in the logs.
>
> Why do you think someone like Darrell Gorter or Vinny Flynt at Redmond
> asks you to send the logs? It's because they know damn well you aren't
> going to be able to either interpret them or have the tools to do so,
> and there is nothing in Vista to teach you how to do so or intepret them.
>
> Many of the error messages are written in Hexidecimal. MSFT Computer
> Science graduates need tools and
> training for even to decipher them. "Suzie Supermarket Chauffeur the
> Kids in the Family SUV" isn't about to be able to.
>
> Apple has an appropriate commercial. The Windows character who also
> appears on Jon Stewart says he doesn't know what the error messages
> mean. Neither do 99+% of MSFT end users nor some of the IT Pros/CTOs who
> manage enterprise IT departments.
>
> MSFT's approach to error messages is so out of touch with reality that
> it would be like a medical doctor spouting some of the more
> abstruse/essoteric medical terms, labs, and lingo to a patient without
> being available to make any real world common sense explanation for the
> patient to put into use.
>
> MSFT needs to jump on this problem that they have done little
> constructive to correct in nearly 26 years. They didn't improve it in
> Vista.
>
> CH
>

Susan

That was true when I first started taking an interest in Event
Viewer Reports a few years ago. It is still true but much less so
than it was. You now see inexperienced users seeking help posting
copies of the Report before they are asked. Also the copies posted
greatly aid finding solutions in Google. This progress could slow
down given the way reporting has changed in Vista.


--


Regards.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Susan Bradley, CPA aka Ebitz - SBS Rocks [MVP]"
<sbradcpa@pacbell.net> wrote in message
news:Ow2k%23WwhHHA.5048@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
> Quite frankly the event viewer is not for average folks but for us
> geeks. That's one of the reasons in a network setting you can use
> it to view another computers event viewer.
>
> Event logs are there in case something happens.
>
> The rest of the time, folks don't even know, nor even care that
> it's under the hood.
>
> Patients go to specialists when there is something wrong. We don't
> do DIY surgery.
>

Placing the top errors at the top of the list actually helps the
inexperienced versus the "look for the red stop signs" that we do now.

Gerry Cornell wrote:
> Susan
>
> That was true when I first started taking an interest in Event Viewer
> Reports a few years ago. It is still true but much less so than it was.
> You now see inexperienced users seeking help posting copies of the
> Report before they are asked. Also the copies posted greatly aid finding
> solutions in Google. This progress could slow down given the way
> reporting has changed in Vista.
>
>