Submitted by We’re really on the subject of software installation issues on OSAlert lately, and this story, making its rounds on the internet, fits in quite well. Back in the day, during the antitrust lawsuits against Microsoft, Microsoft had to make a whole slew of corporate email public. In light of Gates’ imminent withdrawal from Microsoft, SeattlePI dug up a little gem among these emails, one in which Bill Gates goes on a full-blown rant about the difficulties he had trying to download and install Windows MovieMaker, back in 2003.
The email is massively long, but I’m reprinting it here anyway, for a number of reasons. One, it gives a good insight into how Microsoft is very well capable of criticising itself, something some other companies in the same business could take a few pointers from. Two, it shows Bill Gates in a far more direct, angry manner, something we don’t get to see during his public appearances. And, most importantly, three: the email gives a darn good insight into how usability issues work cumulatively, something many software developers fail to understand.
---- Original Message ----<br />
From: Bill Gates<br />
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 10:05 AM<br />
To: Jim Allchin<br />
Cc: Chris Jones (WINDOWS); Bharat Shah (NT); Joe Peterson; Will Poole; Brian Valentine; Anoop Gupta (RESEARCH)<br />
Subject: Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame<br />
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I am quite disappointed at how Windows Usability has been going backwards and the program management groups don't drive usability issues.
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Let me give you my experience from yesterday.
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I decided to download (Moviemaker) and buy the Digital Plus pack ... so I went to Microsoft.com. They have a download place so I went there.
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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.
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This site is so slow it is unusable.
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It wasn't in the top 5 so I expanded the other 45.
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These 45 names are totally confusing. These names make stuff like: C:Documents and SettingsbillgMy DocumentsMy Pictures seem clear.
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They are not filtered by the system ... and so many of the things are strange.
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I tried scoping to Media stuff. Still no moviemaker. I typed in movie. Nothing. I typed in movie maker. Nothing.
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So I gave up and sent mail to Amir saying - where is this Moviemaker download? Does it exist?
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So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated.
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They told me to go to the main page search button and type movie maker (not moviemaker!).
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I tried that. The site was pathetically slow but after 6 seconds of waiting up it came.
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I thought for sure now I would see a button to just go do the download.
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In fact it is more like a puzzle that you get to solve. It told me to go to Windows Update and do a bunch of incantations.
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This struck me as completely odd. Why should I have to go somewhere else and do a scan to download moviemaker?
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So I went to Windows update. Windows Update decides I need to download a bunch of controls. (Not) just once but multiple times where I get to see weird dialog boxes.
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Doesn't Windows update know some key to talk to Windows?
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Then I did the scan. This took quite some time and I was told it was critical for me to download 17megs of stuff.
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This is after I was told we were doing delta patches to things but instead just to get 6 things that are labeled in the SCARIEST possible way I had to download 17meg.
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So I did the download. That part was fast. Then it wanted to do an install. This took 6 minutes and the machine was so slow I couldn't use it for anything else during this time.
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What the heck is going on during those 6 minutes? That is crazy. This is after the download was finished.
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Then it told me to reboot my machine. Why should I do that? I reboot every night -- why should I reboot at that time?
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So I did the reboot because it INSISTED on it. Of course that meant completely getting rid of all my Outlook state.
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So I got back up and running and went to Windows Update again. I forgot why I was in Windows Update at all since all I wanted was to get Moviemaker.
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So I went back to Microsoft.com and looked at the instructions. I have to click on a folder called WindowsXP. Why should I do that? Windows Update knows I am on Windows XP.
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What does it mean to have to click on that folder? So I get a bunch of confusing stuff but sure enough one of them is Moviemaker.
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So I do the download. The download is fast but the Install takes many minutes. Amazing how slow this thing is.
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At some point I get told I need to go get Windows Media Series 9 to download.
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So I decide I will go do that. This time I get dialogs saying things like "Open" or "Save". No guidance in the instructions which to do. I have no clue which to do.
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The download is fast and the install takes 7 minutes for this thing.
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So now I think I am going to have Moviemaker. I go to my add/remove programs place to make sure it is there.
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It is not there.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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What an absolute mess.
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Moviemaker is just not there at all.
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So I give up on Moviemaker and decide to download the Digital Plus Package.
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I get told I need to go enter a bunch of information about myself.
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I enter it all in and because it decides I have mistyped something I have to try again. Of course it has cleared out most of what I typed.
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I try (typing) the right stuff in 5 times and it just keeps clearing things out for me to type them in again.
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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.
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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?)
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When I really get to use the stuff I am sure I will have more feedback.When SeattlePI asked Bill Gates about this particular email last week, he chuckled. “There’s not a day that I don’t send a piece of e-mail… like that piece of e-mail. That’s my job.”
if that email was from 2003 why does microsoft.com still suck to use?
does he have to complain about everything to get things done?
Ya know, that seemed like a pretty matter of fact email. I don’t know if I’d consider it angry or not.
But think if this happened at Apple.
Jobs wouldn’t be sending an email, he’d be in someones (or several someones) faces, exploding and covering them with froth and spittle.
It’s easy to disregard this email and file it under “yea, we should do something about that”.
I imagine, however, that being in an angry Jobs RDF puts a little more fire in to someone.
It never ceases to amaze me how easy stuff is to install on the Mac. I always feel like I’m missing something. I’ll gladly pay the download and extra disk space these apps take for that simplicity.
Even better. Imagine the coked up Jobs (Disclamer; It seems the behavior presented if not the recreation chosen at the time but that’s not a claim of fact by me) of the early years. Those years when he’d show up to interviews barefoot and kick the applications that wore suits out half way through..
Oh man I’d love to be a fly on the wall just to watch that. “And then Jobs snapped.. he lost it.. he fakes the developer out with a kind comment and a left hook then circles right..” hehehe.. this is going to keep me giggling all day..
(second reply but it doesn’t relate to the smartss first reply)
That was my biggest problem when I first started mucking with osX; it was too easy. I was sure I’d missed something. I had to install VLC so I downloaded it and a compressed file apeared on the desktop. I double clicked and there was a text file and an icon. I moved the icon to the list of programs then though; “ok, now what do I do to finalize this sucker so I can use it.. crap.. that’s it? That can’t be it.. where are the files, where are the save data folders?”
Everything became clear when I found my way to the terminal, saw that Unix cli stairing back at me and discovered the rest of the program files within the subdirectories manipulated as a single object through the icon representation.
So what you’re saying is that Gates is more professional than Jobs.
Being in your subordinates face spitting and frothing isn’t good management.
I almost feel guilty, but reading that email made me smile.
I know Microsoft isn’t a monlithic company by any stretch of the imagination, despite the branding. However, when the Chariman of the Board is as far out of sync with what the lawyers are telling the product managers are telling team leaders are telling the devs to actually do, how can you help but chuckle? And compared to Windows Vista, Microsoft.com is a usability dream.
That’s just rough.
What has consistently amazed me for years now is how poor the website of the biggest tech company in the world is. Apart from poor design and ugly aesthetic, it is virtually impossible to find anything you are looking for. It is an order of magnitude easier to use google to get to a microsoft page then it is to use their search engine, which I have never had return the results I wanted before.
It doesn’t stop there. MSDN and Technet have a ton of phenomenal documentation. I mean, I have been using the Microsoft DHTML reference way back since I was doing JSP work for firefox browsers deploying to solaris servers with an oracle backend.
But the same issues plague their tech sites. A ridiculous amount of poorly performing javascript to create a ui that is not only ugly and sluggish, but a pain to navigate. And again, a search function that is unique in how it never returns what you want. You would think that eventually with enough queries you would get good results for something, if by nothing more then plain dumb luck. nope. It is almost like they deliberately are trying to make a poor search engine.
It completely boggles my mind, and has for years.
[quote]It completely boggles my mind, and has for years.[/quote]
Not surprising, really. Why should they work to make it better? Its users have to go there anyway.
Not really. The user part of the site is pretty much a sales pitch. Its the tech professionals that have to go there, and usually MS treats us like kings.
MS should be outsourcing the site to a web design firm. If they are already, they should fire that firm and hire another one.
This email indicates that regardless of all the naysayers, at least Bill Gates himself cares about quality enough to do something about it, to the best of his abilities in terms of his time and personal efforts. Unfortunately, it seems there’s not enough like him that work for him to come up with proper consistency! I, too, would get very frustrated to have to deal with this all the time as a lead geek, and of course, his fortunes (which he probably doesn’t care that much about, as it’s moot) are affected by this, but, more than anything, his personal pride is.
Would he have cared if it hadn’t inconvenienced him? Us techs have been picking up the pieces from this kind of mess for years but when we say anything, we’re naysayers. Odd how there wasn’t any improvement in either the “last sane place” add/remove or in the website design. I still have a long list of “update Q3243219” left in my add/remove and if these are updates, why don’t they just replace the files they update rather than make an add/remove entry; it’s not like we’re going to remove them later else it wouldn’t be an OS Update Patch.
The letter was a great read when it hit the news sights though. A bunch of the regulars elsewhere have been trying to find any evidence that it’s a hoax but it keeps turning up on reputable servers.
“Would he have cared if it hadn’t inconvenienced him?”
No, he wouldn’t have, because it would have worked. When was the last time you complained about something that works? Hows he supposed to know if something works if he doesn’t try it?
I don’t mean if he’d tried it and it had worked flawlessly would he still complain.. that’s just foolishness. Of course rational people don’t complain because something works.
I should elaborate, if he hadn’t tried to install Movie Maker and only heard of it not working for other people.. would he have taken such concern?
Hard to say, really, but we haven’t seen the other 200,000 emails he has sent, so it’s hard to say. I know that he sent an email about the security problems with XP in 2002.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2…
So I tend to think he might act on complaints, at least some of the time. Security today with Windows and Office has improved greatly.
Edited 2008-06-26 20:45 UTC
I know he used to regularily send “good work” email to indavidual developers when he had the chance to do code review and spotted something particularily eligant. Once you get a business too the size of MS, it’s a whole other animal though. I’d also like to think he’s constantly pusing for product quality but that makes me wonder why he hasn’t pushed the testing budget to back it.
Either way, the email was a great read.
Do you mean that “the best of his abilities in terms of his time and personal efforts” is writing an e-mail? He was the boss, wasn’t he? Did any of those complaints get fixed?
Who was in charge when the Registry became unusable? Who was in charge when the file system became unusable?
I’m mildly impressed that he at least recognized that those things were broken, but that just makes me angrier that after 10+ years they have done nothing to fix any of it!
Oh well, at least Bill felt better after caring enough to send a nastygram.
P.S. None of this is meant to be offensive to the poster I am replying to. It’s just that 15 years as a Windows developer has done its work on my blood pressure.
Check out #143079.
“The Steve Jobs version:
If the MovieMaker download site isn’t working by tomorrow at 6 am I will come down there at 6:01 am and choke the living **** out of all of you.“
As for the message, Gates smiled and said, “There’s not a day that I don’t send a piece of e-mail … like that piece of e-mail. That’s my job.”
I’m not sure which is more surprising: that Gates is acting as some sort of post-release quality control tester, or that after 5 years and (presumably) many hundreds of such messages, it doesn’t seem to have made a difference in the quality and usability of Microsoft.com
In fact, visiting today, the first thing I see is an in-your-face dialogue to install Silverlight. It obscures the rest of the homepage until I either decline or accept. Gee, thanks.
I dont know what microsoft.com you went to but the one I tried sure didnt have a gigantic dialog about installing silverlight. All I see is a small “bubble” about trying the site in silverlight. Not obtrusive in any way.
I just went to http://www.microsoft.com and got the “big window” like the parent post. Using Firefox 3.0.
This is the first time I have gone to microsoft.com in a LONG time so maybe it depends on browser and/or cookies.
EDIT… Just checked, went back to the sight and only the “small bubble” now. So it seems that cookies on the browser are involved as to what you see.
Edited 2008-06-26 06:17 UTC
Aha, now that you mention it I do recall getting that hideously obtrusive window about installing Silverlight some time ago.
There is just so, so much to comment on in that email. It’s a beautiful piece of work. I had to keep reminding myself that the owner of the company, who has single-handedly forced Windows down the collective throats of the computing world, composed this email.
This email should be broken down and analyzed sentence by sentence as it contains enough fodder to keep OS News going for at least 3 months. Paul Thurrott is probably reading that and weeping in the corner of his basement.
Anyway, my favorite part (other than the Moviemaker bashing) was this…
“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.”
Let’s analyze, shall we? “The one part of windows that was usable.” Ladies and germs, this email was written almost 2 years after XP went gold. Astounding. I now have a new-found affection for Bill Gates. It’s very clear that Microsoft ran Bill Gates, not the other way around.
To that end, I will say this….Moviemaker is crap. Complete and utter crap. It’s disgraceful to force your public to have to use that garbage.
Gates noted that Microsoft plans to include Movie Maker as part of Windows Live, so people will get the program when they download that online package.
Hopefully the Live team will get hold of this application and do their magic. So far, the upgrades they’ve provided on the other parts of the live suite have been good. Not as good as something from Apple, but it’ll be better then the poor software we have at the moment with movie maker.
I hope you’re right, or at least let it come close to competing with iMovie. Other than the terrible interface and usability, I really also want NOTHING to do with wmv. I want to take a home video off my miniDV camera and burn it to DVD. Period.
IMO, iMovie, iPhoto, and Garageband are the best “me-too” apps there are. Almost worth buying a Mac for.
“we never expected anyone to use the download site for actually downloading anything”
That was favourite. I’m just completely stunned that any company would post a website and actually not think it was going to be used. Heck, I put a server on a network feed and I’m already getting visitors trying to do stuff and that’s long before I get apache up with a website. Wow..
Apparently they also thought that no one would use their eopen site either. It sucks almost as bad as moviemaker. In fact, it loads faster under Firefox….if you can believe it.
“they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated.”
A golden quote indeed.
I want it on a shirt.
MS is probably buried under so much bureaucracy that getting anything fixed is probably impossible. Windows was never usable and good and I really doubt that Bill had any say in what goes into windows, office, etc. Jobs has say, things get done and having a strong leader is a must for a compnay as big as MS. Ballmer isn’t it.
Whose fault is that? Who built this bureaucracy?
Then who did?!
Apparently Bill wasn’t either.
I’m not a Windows user but sometimes I’m ‘tech support’ for friends and relatives who are. Whenever I go to Microsoft’s support website I can never find what I’m looking for. Entering a query into the search field returns all kinds of useless articles.
I type the same search into Google and I get exactly what I need, usually links to Microsoft knowledge docs on Microsoft’s website that are somehow hidden using their own search protocols.
Loved the article.
“The email is massively long, but I’m reprinting it here anyway, for a number of reasons. One, it gives a good insight into how Microsoft is very well capable of criticising itself, something some other companies in the same business could take a few pointers from.”
That does not make sense to say that. I really doubt that you know what is going on internally in every compagny out there, so your point is nonsense. Microsoft never makes such statement in public as any other compagny. Moreover what we see here is an internal email that should never have been made public, and any other compagny has such internal emails where employees communicates freely. So again what’s surprising?
No, the real surprising thing for me is that Gates who is/was supposed to be the Chief Software Architect at Microsoft does not have a clue on what is going on, what the platform is doing and heck he does not how to fix an issue on its own system. I mean, come on, this guy is supposed to be in the computer industry so he should have gone to see the devs, talk to them and even contribute to fix the issue.
But i guess, being a Software Architect does not mean anything at Microsoft and this is all the drama of this compagny….
Bill gates isn’t a programmer, and based on this email, much smarter then a novice computer user. (Elementary school qualifications?)
His resume: Some BASIC experience.
Do yourselves a favour, find a real operating system.. where the project leader, is actually a *true* developer.
Actually, he is. Read something about Microsofts early years, he even is a more gifted Programmer than the average CS students i encountered based on what software Gates wrote.
Of course when MS reached a certain size it wouldn’t have made much sense for him to implement MS Apps himself.
I just finished “The rise and fall of Commodore” in the loo (a good book but you’re not really a fan of the Gould + Ali combo when you’re done). The author gave billg quite some credits when it comes to programming.
I’d rather work at msft than apple without any hesitation whatsoever. Yes, Darth Ballmer and his evil sidekicks are part of the bargain, but Jobs is not and msft have some very cool stuff.
I have a 24″ imac, Linux (FC & CentOS) and XP. I like all of them and I occasionally hate all of them.
I’m a long time linux user, and really dislike windows and what it’s become. That being said, you’ve completely missed the point of his email.
You don’t know WTF you’re talking about. Gates wrote one of the first BASIC interpreters for the MITS Altair 8800. He wrote it in assembly language, and it fit into 4K (8K, for a later version) on extremely primitive hardware. Very few of you ass-clowns could do that TODAY, so lighten up on the guy. He’s a true developer in every sense. Check the ideology at the door.
Edited 2008-06-26 17:28 UTC
I agree with you 100%. (And I suspect that the post you’re replying to was tongue-in-cheek.)
But that just makes it worse! He knows better!
…of another great man, who once said: “This is ‘high’ priority because the wife will kill me if she doesn’t have her videos.”.
No, really. It’s a tad different though, but I’m also trying to get Movie Maker. (Need to do some *very basic* video editing, thought Movie Maker was right for the job.)
I go to MS.com and search of Movie Maker and find Movie Maker download site quickly. There it says if I upgrade to XP SP2 I get movie maker.
The problem is: I’m on XP SP3.
On the side it also said I should see on Windows Update and get it there. So I checked. No Windows Movie Maker.
I am not sure, but I think it comes with Windows. Check Add/Remove Windows components
It’s not there, that was one of the first places I’ve checked.
Type moviemk in the Run dialog. It’s the only way I know how to get it open, short of finding the actual exe.
Its been on the start menu, in the root under ‘All Programs’ by default in XP ever since SP2…
When I moved from Windoze 2000 to XP Pro, Moviemaker was part of the standard install package. So why would Bill want to down load it anyway?
I find it hard to see his email being a rant.
His a concerned executive that is passionate about his products and he wants to suceed. I have my reservations about Microsoft, but in the end Gates is completely right – his experience with Moviemaker, the terrible search functionality arguments are completely funded.
We run Sharepoint which drives significant portions of our intellectual property – and the search functionality sucks!
Check this link out, it describes another famous email by Jim Allchin – a Microsoft executive who was comparing Apple’s software by sayingg MS had lost its way while painting Apple in a much better light by saying:
“I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft”
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/110354.asp
Now that’s some fighting words.
Oh c’mon. If this isn’t a rant then I don’t know what is. In any large company this would have been considered inappropriate or at least highly unproffessional. Not to mention the reputation damage that is done to Microsoft, especially in the corporate world.
The CEO having legitimate concerns about your product is inappropriate? Seriously? I dont know what large companies you’ve worked for (probably none) but I’m happy I dont work for those if voicing concerns internally about shortcomings in your product is inappropriate.
You’ve never read any internal executive emails, have you? Much, much worse things are said in internal emails every day.
apt-get install steve-jobs
I hate Windows for the most part, it has its place (Not in my house but other places) but I do Windows support for a living because all that spyware that needs removin pays well!
The one problem I have above ALL others is finding patches on MS.com.
First off I want to shoot the damn site for poppin up “Install Silverlight” On every damn page you go to. If I wanted Silverlight I would of installed it when I went to MS.com. I don’t need it 10 layers into the site!
The next thing is the inconsistant way they label patches and the 50 different ways you can install them. Some are MSI’s, some EXE’s some can be installed silent, some not. Some force reboot, some require reboot but dont force it. And the kicker is having 5 different patches for different applications under the same damn KB number. GURRRRRR. For example there is a patch MS08-026 It applies to problems in Office. So we have Office 2003 SP2 at my site. I download the patch, install it and all is well. A couple of months later I add the Office 2007 compatability pack to our standard image. Go to Microsoft update, install all updates, all is well. I request a security scan of the image from our Sec Ops group and low and behold MS08-026 comes up missing and is a major security risk.
So I check add and remove programs, it’s there. I check the registry, it’s there. I check with Sec Ops and I find out that there is another patch with a different KB number but the same MS number. Even though this patch is not on the primary download page for MS08-026, even though for the compat pack it says this patch is not needed, there is a patch for the compat pack that has the same MS number but different KB number.
The point is that #1 this missing patch should of shown up on MS’s update page. (But a lot of sec patches dont) #2 use a different MS number if the KB number is different. Having the MS number the same but the patch in a different location is silly.
Things like this are all around MAJOR headaches. Gurrrrr!
Is anyone else horrified by the way Windows manages update installations? Download for 10 minutes, processes stops to ask you some questions, install for 20 minutes, another set of questions, force restart. It’s absolute crap. I don’t get how Microsoft never learned to ask users pertinent questions BEFORE patch installation so they don’t have to babysit their machines for an hour while it goes along! And MS patch installation is incredibly slow, as Bill Gates also pointed out in his email. Compare this to Apple: All licenses, password prompts, and install options appear right at the beginning so you can spend 3 minutes and then leave the computer alone.
[i]”There’s not a day that I don’t send a piece of e-mail … like that piece of e-mail. That’s my job.”/i>
He should have send more e-mails during de development phase of Vista? Or less?
I’d like to see a prominent Linux guy like the CEO of Red Hat or Suse complaining about trying to get ATI drivers to work. Wonder if Schwartz uses OpenSolaris personally.