#8 Defending . . . Microsoft? (1998)

All Rights Reserved © 1998 Thomas W. Day

I wrote the following letter to Infoworld magazine, after reading a really stupid article about how awful it was that Microsoft dominates the computer world:

Software vendors are in a unique position in the world of products.  They too often rely on the idea that repackaging a product is all it takes to erase the bad memories of a previous release.  I have used a product for the last two years and two upgrades in which I recently found a catastrophic bug.  This program is a time management tool, telephone book, and kitchen sink.  The bug was that, occasionally, the program decided to lock out the ability to add pages to the phone book; limiting the user to 38 phone numbers listed under than letter of the alphabet.  This is a serious drawback when the program decides to limit the number of “S” entries.  I called the vendor and was told that the bug has been fixed on the new, major revision of the product and, for a fee, I can obtain this revision.  There is no cure for my version of the product.  Maybe the majority of this market would think that is a good deal.  The vendor did offer a discount on the revision.  I didn’t take him up on the offer because I have lost faith in that vendor’s commitment to product quality and customer satisfaction.  In fact, I’m not convinced that he is capable of producing software that will work reliably and I am convinced that, if it doesn’t, it will be my problem.  So, I’m back in the market for a program that does what this program did for me.  I won’t invest any more money in this company’s products.

As much as we, and I, beat on Microsoft for being the neighborhood bully (bigger being badder), you have to give their customer service credit for being a benchmark that other companies have to, at least, equal.  In the past year Fox Software’s service was drifting into mediocrity.  After using that product for six years, I was starting to consider dBase IV because of my past experiences with Borland’s customer service.  I was reluctant to update my systems with Fox’s newest revisions because every update seemed to tangle me up with a new bug.  Their technical support personnel were no longer serious programmers and it could take one or two weeks to get a reply to a fax or telephone message.  Those replies were often very close to useless and two more days would be lost waiting for another attempt. 

Even Microsoft’s bug fixes do more than just correct problems.  In my experience Microsoft is more likely to be adding minor, but useful, features than correcting programming mistakes.  And not only do they send the upgrades for free, but they ship them Federal Express 2nd day air. 

February 1998

Looking for a Perfect Market for Software?

Since the earliest days of the Rat's Eye View (#34, 2000), I argued that "The Rat's Eye Business Rule #1: No business is more than necessarily smarter than its customers." One of the best examples is in business software. I do not mean Quicken's Home and Office or Quicken Books or Microsoft Office or any one of the mass marketed programs that are intended for professional use but are sold to all of us. I mean the specialty software software designed for the biggest suckers in business: businesses. The bigger the business, the dumber the customer.

I've experienced this several times in my business career. The first time went back to the days (1967) of punchcards and hardwired business computers. That was followed by suffering with college computer systems in the 70's, Gerber and HP's godawful CAD systems in the 70's & 80's, the horrendous misery of IBM's quality management software with two medical devices companies (1990's), and most recently I'm all the way back to my own beginnings having to use the POS software that colleges buy. This past week, I heard exactly the same story from a middle manager in Minnesota's state government.

In particular, my own most resent misery has been caused by, first, the disorganized coding disaster produced by SonisWeb followed by an even bigger catastrophe misnamed CampusVue from Computer Management Corp. Both of these companies have done a fine job of targeting the function that most "educational institutions" are most concerned with: income management and customer/student tracking. However, these programs completely neglect the primary function of an educational facility; classroom management. From recording attendance to administering, scoring, and storing exams and final grades, these programs appear to have been written by a first semester, computer science student no more recently than 1975. Even worse, every "upgrade" blows away more useful features, blocks instructor access from classroom information, and adds more keystrokes to instructor's interaction with the already cumbersome and incompetent software.

You might wonder how such poorly written software can find customers? Easy. Administration buys the crap and administration has no clue what goes on in the classroom. You can't get a dumber customer than one who doesn't use the product or know what it's used for. What passes for "management" in today's dysfunctional organizations is so busy packing its pockets with "performance bonuses" for awful performance that nobody has an eye on operations or the bottom line or the future. That is pretty obviously a formula for disaster.

Customer Service (with the agricultural definition)

I just bought a laptop that came with Windows 7 Lite (or whatever POS name Microsquash put on the cheapest, most limited version of their lame new OS). I thought I'd use it for a while and see if I found a reason to put up with a new interface and learning curve. A week later, I'm stumped. I can't find a thing to like about the new system.

I admit, I lived with my old Dell laptop for more than 10 years and the only reason I'm replacing it is because the keys are coming off when I type. Nothing about the system is slow, cumbersome, or inconvenient. While I worked at finding a reason to like the new OS, I stumbled on this website, "I don't like Windows 7 and I want to go back to Windows XP. Is this possible and if so how can I do this?" on the Microsoft "Answers" webpage. An older user asked how to turn back the software clock on a new laptop similar to mine. What she got was attitude and arrogance from Microsoft's "help desk" (a business oxymoron if there ever was one). I am amazed (a little) that Microsoft's management has left the condescending replies on the site for old users to see, but it's a little enlightening.In my case, I bought a reconditioned Dell that originally had an XP/7 OS option, so I don't have to worry about having drivers for XP. Other users are less fortunate.

The question the Microsoft characters completely avoided answering was in providing some reason for "upgrading." Since most of the new OS features are only visible to IS dweebs, that makes for a lame sales pitch. Without a practical justification for changing, most computer users don't care one way or another how the work gets done, let alone what the OS number might be. And that's, apparently, all that changed for Win 7.

Mac users have put up with this crap forever. Apple could care less about legacy users. The company regularly blasts out "upgrades" that disable older computers and, sometimes, does serious damage to customers' data. I have often found myself in the position of needing a computer to fix one of my Apple computers, when an OS X update disabled my machine. Since I have a fully functioning audio/video Mac and haven't seen a reason on the planet to change what works, I expect my current Mac tower rig to outlive me. If it doesn't, it will most likely outlive my career and that is good enough.

Corporations have grown past the point of considering customers to be the people their products serve to imagining customers obligated to buy the crap they build. As a society, we're no longer "citizens" but "consumers." As individuals, our rights are subservient to corporate profits. As a nation, we're far past the point of no return on the path to when greed and power are the sole motivations of those who imagine themselves to be the "job providers" and when citizens are left with no democratic method to regain control of government and our lives. Microsoft and Apple are perfect examples of how indebted crass corporations imagine citizens to be and they are equally powerful examples of confused businesses that are likely to fall hard when they fall.

(Postscript: I did replace Win7 with WinXP and experienced a dramatic improvement in performance. Things my computer was unable to do with Win7 in charge, the computer did easily with WinXP. That settles it for me, I don't need Win7's features and can't tolerate the lack of performance.)