. Or whoever runs IBM, APPLE, M$, INTEL, AMD and the other big leaders of the computing industry? Admit it everybody, We'd all love it is these people were readily available to have a coffee with us just to talk about things. Write an email to microsoft and address it to bill gates. Chances are he'll never even know he (or any of them) will ever had an email from the likes of us. Chances are that the email will never make it passed whoever receives the email first and I'll garantee you that this person is nowhere near the top of the corporate hierarchy. You go to a restaurant, you eat your food, you hated it, you ask to talk to the chef, or the manager or the boss, chances are you'll get to see them. but if you're not satisfied with Windows, go ahead and try to tell them "I wanna talk to the boss". Don't hold your breath. and even if you don't hold your breath, you'll die before you get to see them big bosses.What's the point I'm trying to make here? Simple, no matter how much we're not satisfied with windows, our beloved Bill Gates won't ever know about it. Anyone that can actually make a decision to change the way windows work won't ever get to see it and therefore won't ever know we're not satisfied. If you go to the restaurant and just bitch at the waitress that you hated your food and never ask to see anyone else that could fire the cook, next time to come, you'll eat the same food you hated and bitch at the waitress again. That's what the customer support of these big industries is all about. Making the company look good and making you look bad. They have some incompetent low level person who's just is to keep you away from those that can actually answer your questions or your complaints the right way. That goes for a hell of alot more than one computer related business. Why? because they're so concerned about the money they make, the values of their stocks that they couldn't give a rat's ass what we, the customers, think about their products. If that's what happens when you get too big, then I'll set a ceiling to any business I start. and either stop or quit when I get there.
Let me rephrase my statement I made previously in this thread. I don't hate microsoft products, they have 1000s of coders and when they finally get together and work they can do very nice things. What I hate is the business practice in itself. I hate knowing that the big boys at M$ will never know the things I don't like about their software (if any) or instabilities or whatever. That's on the side of the customers. As a business, I hate the fact that I'll either have to empty my financial resources to take them to court time and time again until I have to shut down the business cause I can't afford to keep on bringing them to court (and that goes like that whether I'm right or wrong in my case). I hate the fact that if I make something that is 100 times better than M$'s way, I'll either have to get sold (forcebly or I'll have to do the court cycle) or just take whatever amount they are offering just so I can't be the one to revolutionize the computing industry it always has to be one of those "big boys".
It took a damn long time for Windows to be what it is. Plenty of companies went through the windows hell just like I did as a person through windows 286 and 386, windows 3.0, 3.1 (ok getting there but oops, it's obsolete so Windows 95 came along and screwed us over twice as hard. and so on and so forth. as a consumer, this is all I need to remember of microsoft. so when Windows XP came along, it took me a hell of a long time to finally say, "They've finally got it" and now they're changing it in windows vista. I predict another couple years of hell for that transition. I mean, it looks good, from the screenshots I've seen, but of course there's probably plenty of screenshots I haven't seen that doesn't promise such a spectacular OS. When they made the first windows 95 presentations and that blue screen appeared (I'm sure you all remember this). M$ should have been shot where they stand and good ole reliable bill gates should have had allot more to say than "That's why we didn't release it yet" stupid comment. I as a user didn't like that blue screen that popped up. and business wise, I'm sure they didn't like it either for even more reasons than my own.
As a hardware manufacturer, I just can't believe there's an advantage to being M$ only, you can't convince me of that. and today, you can't quite say that 90% of users are on windows, that wen't down considerably even in the last year. and I'm talking users here. Business that are on windows today do it because they invested so much money in their windows products, I'm sure a good 40% of them AT LEAST would not be on windows today if it wasn't a question of money. ATLEAST 40%....This is just like when the AS/400 came along from IBM and made companies sign 5 years (i'll only use you) contracts ... all of them didn't renuew their contracts, but it was cool cause IBM still made their money for a whole 5 years. Talk about income security.
And what about the overlaps, How many people in all the users, have a dual boot Linux/windows on their systems? where, in the stats, do we put these people? how many of those people use windows more than they do Linux? this isn't to bring down Microsoft here, it's the sheer reality. Microsoft is loosing it. Like all businesses I wish them success, but they're gonna have to kick themselves in the butt to get that success. Windows Vista won't really help them. ok it might a little bit, but they';ll need more than that. Especially with those corporate Linux that popped out these past 2 years, who do you think they aim?
. Microsoft is gonna have to take their fingers out of their collective asses while they still can.My two cents (well more like 2$ lol). But look around, and I'm not that far off of reality here.
