on Opinion & Rant

Epic Microsoft Flame - By Bill Gates

I’ve been known to harsh on Microsoft from time to time, but I haven’t written anything to compare to this email fired off by Bill Gates himself. Apparently Bill wanted to install MS Movie Maker, cataloged his experience, and sent it off to a bunch of Microsoft managers. The email was revealed as a part of one of their myriad antitrust lawsuits.

I’ll leave it to you if you want to read the whole thing, but some highlights:

  • The first 5 times I used the site it timed out while trying to bring up the download page. Then after an 8 second delay I got it to come up. This site is so slow it is unusable. [microsoft.com]
  • What the heck is going on during those 6 minutes? That is crazy. This is after the download was finished.
  • So I do the download. The download is fast but the Install takes many minutes. Amazing how slow this thing is.
  • It is not there. What is there? The following garbage is there. Microsoft Autoupdate Exclusive test package, Microsoft Autoupdate Reboot test package, Microsoft Autoupdate testpackage1. Microsoft AUtoupdate testpackage2, Microsoft Autoupdate Test package3.
  • Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up.
  • But that is just the start of the crap. Later I have listed things like Windows XP Hotfix see Q329048 for more information. What is Q329048? Why are these series of patches listed here? Some of the patches just things like Q810655 instead of saying see Q329048 for more information. What an absolute mess.
  • So after more than an hour of craziness and making my programs list garbage and being scared and seeing that Microsoft.com is a terrible website I haven't run Moviemaker and I haven't got the plus package.
  • The lack of attention to usability represented by these experiences blows my mind. I thought we had reached a low with Windows Network places or the messages I get when I try to use 802.11. (don't you just love that root certificate message?)
Ouch.