People who use Microsoft’s Windows XP operating system aren’t taking advantage of many of the systems best features, a top executive said – and the world’s largest software maker has only itself to blame. Jim Allchin, Microsoft’s group vice president for software platforms, including Windows, said he thinks customers aren’t using gadgets like Windows Messenger and Movie Maker because Microsoft hasn’t done a good enough job telling people about them.
Microsoft Exec Says Marketing Effort Faltered with Windows XP
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSAlert.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
People don’t need MSN Messenger. They already have AIM or ICQ. Why switch? Because its MS? That’s not the reason for most. Plus, its very annoying on a new computer, always asking you to get an account.
People don’t see PCs for making movies really. But, people see Macs for this, and will buy one if thats what they want to do.
Movie Maker 2 is actually a very nice consumer video editing app. But it doesn’t support anything other than MPEG-1 which makes it useless.
Windows Messenger is evil and is a source of spam. It’s better to get a third-party client not tied to MS.
I don’t think so. I know about Windows Messenger. How else could I have removed it? ;->
Everyone is aware of Windows Messenger. You can’t not be. It’s like a freaking virus. No one uses it because it is so intrusive.
Like, I hate that oh so convenient bug where if you load up Outlook Express Windows Messenger automatically loads too, even if you tell Outlook Express not to load it.
Movie Maker requires additional hardware to be really useful, and then requires time and patience. The only people that are gonna use it are the ones that really feel the need to.
I think this article is nothing but a PR campaign in disguise to promote these products.
Is MSN only popular here in the Netherlands, then? At least most teenagers, young people, and people who think they are cool have Hotmail and MSN. Though [email protected] does not leave a good impression if that is where “Contact our company” leads to
Windows Movie Maker is the most god-awful consumer video editing program I’ve ever used. It pales in comparison to iMovie, but, this might have something to do with the fact that Apple owns the better and more workable video format. I’m sure there’s some nice iMovie patents out there that make it impossible for microsoft to do other things they may want to do with it as well… but whatever. Its clunkiness and awkwardness, as well as its MPEG-1-only video support as stated above, makes it virtually useless.
As far as windows messenger goes, is microsoft being for real? Of course people aren’t using it! They’re using AOL, which has its own built in AIM! Intergrate AIM into your OS a la iChat and then we’ll talk about people not taking advantage of the tools in front of them.
Comments like this, when made by high-ranking, high-salary, and supposedly knowledgeable MS execs just proves that in addition to being a greedy, facist monopoly with buggy software, they are also some of the dumbest tech heads in the business.
Hi
Microsoft tied up msn to windows so that they could push competition out of the picture like they did netscape. it is suprising for them that it didnt work out
well the answer is yahoo and aol are as much lock in products like msn and hence users wont be able to quit even if they have one friend on the other clients. the open client jabber has not become pervasive because of third party integrated messengers like gaim kopete and trillian
regards
Jess
Why does MS think Windows Messenger is one of “the systems best features”? MSN Messenger has far more features, like more (moving) emoticons, picture support. If they believe Windows Messenger to be a cornerstone of Windows XP they should at least keep it updated and not offer another messenger client for other windows versions that offers more features.
As for not many people using Movie Maker: I think thats because far fewer people are interested in editing movies than MS believes. I really dont know that many people that own a digital camcorder.
“Is MSN only popular here in the Netherlands, then?”
I think so. No joke. In my little community here in Michigan, you’d be a little ashamed to be on MSN. And we’re not elitist bastards, either. For example, most of the people around here feel no embarrassment using AOL.
It’s the PowerPoint of video editing software. Meaning it may have some useful features/flexibility, but they’re hidden underneath layers of fluff and garnished with that nice Microsoft flavour (all roads… er, “save as” dialogues lead to WMV). For quick-n-dirty editing, I’ll take VirtualDub – and if I want to do serious editing, I’ll use a serious program like Premiere (which is actually quite a nice piece of software, contrary to all the “It sux sooo much compared to FCP! Apple ownz!” hype out there).
Most people don’t use that feature as it is useless unless you happen to be on the same LAN. Unless of course you want to go through the trouble of forwarding ports through your firewall. Home users don’t and won;t use anything like that for the most part anyway. For Corporate environments there are much better cheap products out there that let you do more, such as Dameware.
>> Windows Movie Maker is the most god-awful consumer video editing program I’ve ever used. It pales in comparison to iMovie, but, this might have something to do with the fact that Apple owns the better and more workable video format. I’m sure there’s some nice iMovie patents out there that make it impossible for microsoft to do other things they may want to do with it as well… but whatever. Its clunkiness and awkwardness, as well as its MPEG-1-only video support as stated above, makes it virtually useless. <<
I was thinking today why people were not impressed with Windows XP, and why people like Apple (Am about to buy an Apple notebook myself). I just figured out why. MS in all of its wisdom sells Windows XP home and Windows XP professional. Windows XP Home is a watered down Windows XP professional and does not allow you to do many things. Oddly enough MS is the only OS vendor that does this. MacOS X is a full blown OS with all the bells and whistles, and so is LINUX.
Maybe the problem by MS is in its quest to make money they give the consumer hobbled software in the hopes that they “upgrade”. Considering software is now a commodity that is probably the reason why people are not impressed with Windows XP.
See for example:
http://www.grc.com/stm/shootthemessenger.htm
All people I know that use Win XP asked me to remove Windows Messenger from their computer.
J.
Marketing is not the problem. Many of the default apps have serious usability issues. Most people I knew were excited about the features when they first got xp, but gave up once they tried to use them.
Microsoft’s approach to usability is to make a bad interface, then add wizards until they think it is done. Wizards are patchwork, they should take a look at everyplace they have a wizard in their os, sit down and fix the problem.
Windows and MSN Messenger are some of the first things I REMOVE. Along with NetMeetings and Outlook Express.
I feel no shame using AIM. I use an older version of it (4.8, I believe) which I can optimize with MyIM.
Seems that m$ wants to get a monopoly in other computer sectors … I hope that the EU gov’t teaches them a lesson.
I don’t want m$ to bundle $#!+ that I will never use but it still takes up valuable space on my hdd. Anyone ever try to manually delete some of the folders withing Program Files … such as the pesky gaming zone, messenger, and what not.
I am going to choose programs that suit my needs and not what m$ wants to shove down my throat.
Thank goodness for Linux where I can choose what I want …. and can choose what installs and what doesn’t .. unlike ms win where it loads bunch of stuff with no way to uninstall it … whats worse it that it is locked so that you can’t delete anything
“Windows XP Home is a watered down Windows XP professional and does not allow you to do many things.”
There are actually very few differences between Home and Pro. I cant find a link right now but a google search should easily find this out for you. I think in all there are 8 features that are in Pro but not Home.
You see, Home is supposed to be for most consumers, Pro is supposed to be for office workstations. Thus you would assume that they would be tailored for their environments. Does an office worker really need MSN, solitaire, paint, and Movie Maker? I mean seriously, why are they in there. Windows messaging (the annoying spam tool) is for system administrators to issue alerts to the an entire network easily and quickly. Why it got put in Home is beyond me. Windows Messenger is used by many corporations for their intranet messaging while also being compatible with MSN Messenger. MSN Messenger should have been bundled with Home, and Windows Messenger should have been in Pro. They basically took Home, added 8 small features, called it Pro and added $100. How pathetic.
AIM and ICQ are horrible products compared to MSN Messenger. Both of these have some of the worst UIs ever. GAIM even kept one of the worst parts of AIM: the Away window (I still haven’t figured the logic behind this one yet.)
When Microsoft made MSN Messenger, they knew what they were doing. They saw the apparent mistakes made by their competitor and made a much better product in the end. Right now, MSN Messenger is the best IM application on the Windows platform.
Most of the Windows users I know ditched their AIM and ICQ accounts long ago.
Well, I *do* use MSN Messenger (not to be confused with Windows Messenger) and I like the software, and most people I know here (Denmark) uses it and likes it too. And no, I’m not a Windows Zealot!
Actually I run both WinXP and Mandrake Linux at my house, and I also think Macs’ are cool and I want one THE day I can afford one
Well, how come people bash MSN Messenger? It might be a bit bloated, but it’s easy to setup, it’s got more features than most of the other ones, it’s well-designed and if it’s just because it’s M$ who are behind it, well AOL and ICQ too, have got large nasty corporations behind them, so I really can’t spot the difference?
It seems weird to me that people would prefer the even more bloated ICQ, tied to large public chat-channels and operated by a really bad interface, but people are different all over the world…
MSN Messenger is the best. It blows ICQ and AIM away. MS should update Windows Messenger to be more like MSN.
N.B. Why should people be ashamed to be on MSN and Hotmail? All the cool kids use MSN. They are excellent tools. Also, The MSN network has a cool dictionary, encyclopaedia and much more.
isnt AOL’s AIM product full of Ads just like MSN? last time i used it, it was, MSN is improving since its 5.X days still needs better Webcam video in it, for Movie maker who wants to use such a program, maybe a programmer etc needs to for doing a webpage or something but an end user doesnt need to be using the program, i think microsoft need to look at why they force these programs into there Windoze OS’s when prolly 70% of its users dont use movie maker,
‘”Is MSN only popular here in the Netherlands, then?”
I think so. No joke. In my little community here in Michigan, you’d be a little ashamed to be on MSN. And we’re not elitist bastards, either. For example, most of the people around here feel no embarrassment using AOL’
To each his own. I use MSN because it give me the best internet connection (in this backwoods area) of the providers I’ve tried including Earthlink, even though that’s not saying much, but you’d kind of expect MSN to work better with Windows than anything else. Even if I am cooperating in probably another anti-trust move by MS, I gotta be connected.
AOL is good but that interface is really annoying. It might be fine for small children, but really now. Who needs anything but a browser?
“N.B. Why should people be ashamed to be on MSN and Hotmail? All the cool kids use MSN.”
“They are excellent tools.”
MSN and Hotmail or the ‘kids’?
I use Jabber instead of MSN now. Although all my friends are using MSN its not a problem for me. I really don’t want to be locked into any proprietary IM network and now I never will be. With Jabber transports I can connect to Yahoo, AIM, MSN or ICQ if need be.
The Jabber client I use, RhymBox, seems to have a much more appealing view more similar to iChat rather than the standard tree view of who’s online that all other IM clients use.
Most of my Community here in Melbourne use MSN Messenger, simply because they started using Windows Messenger when they got thier computer. They are generally new Home Computer owners, and haven’t had the Luxury of ICQ, AIM or Y! before.
In communities which previously didn’t have access to IM systems, Windows Messenger is really making inroads, not because of the Interface, or Protocol, but because of the sheer amount of people in these commuinities who use it.
WRT the whole Home vs Pro situation, Most people purchase a Business Machine and these machines come Pre-Installed with Windows XP Pro. The remainder of people build thier own machine and consider “Since I’m smart enough to build my own computer (Ha!), I’m smart enough to take advantage of the extra features in XP Pro”.
I haven’t played with MovieMaker, but most of the Video Editing Softwares which come bundled with FireWire Cards and DV Cameras are powerful enough to make it look like a dinky toy anyway.
It seems to be largely a generational thing, at least around here. Most people I know my age use either IRC (the geeks) or ICQ (also the geeks). Everyone I know who is under 20 uses MSN messenger though, including the kiddies at the middle school where I work.
The REALLY sad thing I’ve noticed is the number of adults who use hotmail as their primary Email account, even at home. It’s really depressing that so many computer users are ignorant of the advantages of using a POP3/IMAP account with a real mail client, or are just too lazy to bother setting it up.
some one using windows xp and not knowing windows messanger? this is an joke! windows messanger is poping up as soon as you have finished the xp install. i don’t know why microsoft is starting this thing at boot time?!!
movie maker is the most god awful piece of garbage that there is when it comes to movie editing. ulead kills them for ease of use and power on their low end product, and it certainly cannot compete on the high end with any manufacturer.
i use msn messenger because it supports more features than windows messenger. i get on the windows messenger network because most of my friends do. gaim’s support for the windows messenger network leaves alot to be desired IMO, but i use it just peachy for icq and aim. (i detest trillian btw)
if movie maker was worth a crap then he might have something, but its not.
They gotta be kidding, every farmer and his dog uses MSN Messenger here, it’s all people know and it’s all they use. How can it be not popular? You have to look very hard to find someone who don’t use it. Really, as far as I know, everyone who has a computer and chats uses MSN Messenger in Belgium. I hate that freaking app, go Jabber
“It seems to be largely a generational thing… Everyone I know who is under 20 uses MSN messenger.”
That might explain why I’m the only one saying MSN can bring shame. I’m in a 20-26 crowd and everyone else (parents & such) that I know have been using computers since about ’92 or ’95. (Still got some ’95 and ’98 users.) Maybe if I checked out the middle school, I’d find a bunch of MSN users. Ah well.
That isn’t Windows Messenger you’re disabling. It’s Messenger Service, they are two complete different things.
If you go into your Control Panel, then double click on Admin. Tools, and then double click on Services. Scroll down until you see Messenger, right click on it and go into properties and here is the description on it:
“Transmits net send and Alerter service messages between clients and servers. This service is not related to Windows Messenger. If this service is stopped, Alerter messages will not be transmitted.”
You don’t need third party utilities to shoot the messenger(you’re just wasting more resources), while in properties go down to “Startup Type:” drop down menu and select Disable and then click OK. Now you not only free up some resources, you still don’t have to bother with those popups either.
Have a nice day.
They gotta be kidding, every farmer and his dog uses MSN Messenger here, it’s all people know and it’s all they use. How can it be not popular?
In America AOL has a virtual monopoly amoung the technologically impared, and has maintained this monopoly for over a decade. As owner of both AIM and ICQ, both of which came before MSN, these technologies are ingrained into the population.
With instant messaging, you’re basically forced to use whatever service the people you wish to talk to use, and while some may be content with using AIM/ICQ/YIM/MSN simultaneously (which isn’t that bad with a client like Trillian) the majority of people seem to simply stick to AIM.
Win-R -> RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %windir%INFmsmsgs.inf,BLC.Remove
Windows XP SP1 users will get a nusience error about being unable to unregister the OCX because it’s in use. Consequently this file will linger on the system, but it will not be used by any running process.
RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %windir%\INF\msmsgs.inf,BLC.Remove
Eugenia (or someone), can you look into this issue? There really shouldn’t be a need to escape backslashes in comments…
…is like the virus from hell. I would’ve sworn that I had killed it from startup at boot time, but patches are re-activating it or something.
I guess that freaking messenger service is one of the systems “best features” too. Luckily, I was able to kill that shit.
Windows Messenger (or MSN Messenger) is pretty much the standard here in Australia. ICQ used to be very popular, but as WM matured everyone switched to it. AIM was never big, probably because AOL never really took off here (What Australian wants an internet service called “America Online”?).
Personally, I prefer WM’s interface to anything else I’ve ever used. With the older 4.7 version of WM, there’s no ads, no skins, just a simple list of your contacts, and simple message windows. Many others I know use the MSN version, and make use of some of the fancy games and video features, but for my needs, WM is far better. I really hope MS keep supporting both versions of the client, rather than forcing people like myself to use a bulkier client with extra features we won’t use.
quote:
“The REALLY sad thing I’ve noticed is the number of adults who use hotmail as their primary Email account, even at home. It’s really depressing that so many computer users are ignorant of the advantages of using a POP3/IMAP account with a real mail client, or are just too lazy to bother setting it up.”
Well, imagine that you travel a lot. You don’t have access to your own computer, only public computers. You can’t just install your favorite email client and setup your mail account… would that even be safe?
A webbased email service is more practical if you travel a lot.
On the other hand, MS installed a new spam blocking system on hotmail, and I must admit, it works perfectly, at least for me. Spam reduced with 99%
MSN is used a lot at schools and universities.
It’s easy and everybody uses it. And it has a good and easy client. Set up a passport account and you not only have email but also im etc…
Personally, I don’t use msn, only icq.
Clients that can understand lots of protocols are a blessing, like trillian or kopete.
And about Moviemaker…
such a program can only be marketed for a selected group of users, not all windows users. Not everyone wants, or likes, to edit movies. Some like to record music, others like to write, others like to create programs etc…
It’s obvious that the amount of users is limited, and it’s obvious that professionals use professional tools.
Microsoft want us to pay them and use all their default tools Stupid Windows Messenger and WMP and IE(keep patching them!!:-) and those stupid games. And then they have EULA, Activation etc etc who knows if they would have really got free with Intel and tied OS to CPU ID then it would have been worse thing! they could have tracked own everything. And best things is they don’t provide you any warranty for OS and their products! but just patches more patches and still more patches. not an anti-microsoft person, but still i think they are not getting best out of Xp which is a good product over all
Both give me the same basic functionality that I need.
Yahoo Messenger allows me to login in Invisible Mode, MS Messenger does not.
I wouldn’t like my friends knowing if I have logged in unless I wish to talk to them right away, it can be very distracting.
Therefore Yahoo > MS.
I found no use for Movie Maker.
It has surprised me since the Windows 95 days that Microsoft, with its billions of dollars, makes the absolute worst TV commercials of any software/hardware vendor out there. Seriously uninspired and lame. The ads for Windows XP didn’t even make any sense! People would open up their laptops, click the start button and then soar through the air. WTF? And that’s MSN butterfly nerdman is bizarre and creepy. With all their money, they could get some trendy agency to put together some seriously hip ads…but they never do. Their ads are always boxy, conservative and boring…like an SUV. And speaking of SUVs, if relentless TV advertising was able to convince every soccer mom in America that she needs a 7-ton metal tank to haul her latte and cell phone to the office, and every dad that an SUV isn’t just a lifted station wagon…IT’S MANLY, then it shouldn’t be too hard to convince them that they need Windows XP as well…with the right ad campaign.
(my systems: Windows 2000 at work, Debian with KDE at home)
Windows Messenger is not popular because its advanced features (like shared black board, colaborative web browsing, video conferencing) were only supported by other Windows Messengers, not MSN Messengers. (Read ONLY Windows XP machines; not Windows ****, or Mac **** which support the MSN messenger.)
That was the MAJOR problem with Windows Messenger.
MSN Messenger, on the other hand is an increadibly good product.
– Excellent support for Unicode,
– open protocol (Those who were using that cool-new IM thing several years ago on linux remember the noise about diffulties of implementing AIM on Linux. That time around AOL was a major monopolist and a pain in open standards butt. MSN Messenger clients were implemented faster and easier on Linux.)
– Alternative MSN Messenger clients are NOT rutinely blocked from the network like AOL does. (short of recent forced version upgrades)
– Extremly well-polished interface. (Yahoo and AIM are revolting compared to MSN Mess interface) This includes the commercial which are unobtrusive and DO NOT FLASH!
And Microsoft did NOT fail in its propaganda. I know enough stock brokers and other professionals who upgraded to XP just to be able to use the Windows Messenger advanced features. If Windows Messenger was not attached to XP, with some work it would outshine the AIMs and Yahoos of the world.
>>- open protocol (Those who were using that cool-new IM thing several years ago on linux remember the noise about diffulties of implementing AIM on Linux. That time around AOL was a major monopolist and a pain in open standards butt. MSN Messenger clients were implemented faster and easier on Linux.)
I guess you were asleep about a year ago when Microsoft demanded vendors of applications that are compatible with Messenger pay license fees to MS. Yeah, when they came into the IM game they were all about “open standards” and fighting big, bad AOL, but once they got a significant userbase, they did a 180 and became evil, like always.
Personally I do not seem like this has to be such a big problem, messenger is removable. I use ICQ, messenger, and IRC (bridging the generational gap mentioned earlier) and I have used yahoo and AIM as well. Messenger loads very quickly and takes very few resources. I like the speed and the GUI is nice in my opinion. Also it brings up less windows than aim with its news menu if you want to talk about spam. I’m sure you can disable that but its something you have to disable, extra just like deleting Messenger. Besides the technical stuff and people blasting microsoft I think the reason that people use different IMs is that their friends use that particular program.
<quote>Tons of people use messenger: they’re called spammers.</quote>
News to me. I used:
– ICQ for about 8 years (yes i have 7 digit number)
= Everyone and your dog could add themselves to your list and spam you.
– AIM. I (tried to) used AIM for 2 years
= AOL itself was a spammer big enough to make the experience painfull.
– MSN. 5 years of usage. Disable the “mail notofication” and live happily ever after.
= What spammers are you talking about?
<quote>Movie Maker has the equivalent useability of notepad…aka worthless. </quote>
I use Notepad for .bat and .ini editing on clean machines. What do you use? “copy con asdf.ini” in dos?
You are seeing the best side of MS. Just imagine what the total dorks are like that work there.
I don’t use Hotmail or IE or any other M$ software on Windows (I’m forced to have one Windows computer at work) because they are blated, VERY unsecure in that they are easily cracked and exploited, and are very virus prone.
My other computer at work is a Mac iwth OS X. I use that most 99% of stuff at work. Everything on XP is turned off until I need it. I then open IE just to do critical updates and then quickly close IE. The rest of the time I use Opera on XP but Safari is what I use most on the Mac.
I use the Windows machine for Call Center software. Very little else.
Movie Maker = total crap prefere PRemier
MSN = waste of time and total p.a.i.
Frontpage = why bother
Messenger = don’t use im clients as I find them annoying
oh, and finally Net Meeting. Why can’t OS providers give us a clean install with minimal services running and modulised so they only load if there is a request for them.
Then we can do something unheard of in the OS software world, choose the bloody apps we want to use and have installed on our computers. Personal Computers are about computers for the individual to do as with what they want. Not what some idiot marketing exec thinks we want.
Even Linux suffers to an extent from this but at least it’s easier (once one knows what each software package does) to remove the garbage. I also see Zeta going down the same path, I do hope YT make it possible for a clean install and then offer their extras as post install options. Again, at least it will be easy to rip the extra’s out compared to MAC OS-X and Windows XP.
It looks like most of European countries (I live in French-speaking Belgium) use _only_ MSN Messenger.
The reason is simple: installed on any Windows machine. AOL doesn’t exist here (there is AOL France and maybe in other countries, but they are just another ISP). The only people I know who are using AIM are Mac my fellow Mac users. Nobody uses Yahoo! and nobody uses ICQ anymore. ICQ here is known as this ‘old thing that we were using before Messenger, period’.
In fact, MSN Messenger is not a bad product, but its audio/video features are just bad. But everybody uses its webcam feature. In fact, there was a huge increase in webcam sales when MSN Messenger 6 beta was delivered. In 2 or 3 weeks, _everyone_ installed the beta.
Problem is… Mac users have to live with a really outdated, coded-with-feet Messenger client. There are clones, but well… Most of them won’t transfer files, show users pictures or manage group conversations. And none of them have webcam support.
In fact, the situation is even worse: if you tell someone here to use a Mac or Linux (and I happen to like both), they tell you ‘no Messenger 6? you must be joking’. They (we) have friends and just want to be able to communicate with them.
@Piers
Frontpage = why bother
FrontPage is part of Windows XP? Never seen that one before on any of the computers that have XP on them.
Hmmm, I wonder if they really thought their observations through. Perhaps it was the new licensing that came out around the same time that made people not want XP at all. Perhaps it was programs like Trillian that let me connect to different IM clients… and even the same network twice (two Hotmail or Yahoo IDs) that made Messenger suck so bad. Perhaps all the “Messenger pop-up spams” scared people away since M$ was stupid enough to name two different technologies almost the same. Perhaps people that want to make movies get Apple’s or *real* movie making software. Or perhaps its that more people like myself have started shifting to cross-platform apps… apps that are the same on all OS’s… like OpenOffice, Mozilla, etc… so make dual-booting and system portability easier. Perhaps M$ should ask people why they don’t use their software instead of speculating about it.
The only thing necessary for Micro$oft to triumph is for a few good programmers to do nothing”. http://www.nccomp.com“>North
“What spammers are you talking about?”
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,55795,00.html
those spammers.
“I use Notepad for .bat and .ini editing on clean machines. What do you use? “copy con asdf.ini” in dos?”
I use my own editor. I wrote it and it’s perfect for me.
100x the functionality and not even 2x the size.
Dos has it’s own editor called “edit” so you aren’t even savvy enough to ascertain the minimal commands in dos.
This is pure speculation but I think the comments about MSN being more common in Europe are correct. Here in Sweden almost everyone that I know use MSN and the ones that don’t use ICQ or trillian. Almost no one use AOL or Yahoo. This is probably because AOL have almost no presence at all here. As far as I know they does not have any operations in Scandinavia at all.
What we really need is a standard protocol for IM though, it’s really irritating as you have to use what your friends use. As my laptop is a Powerbook I would really like to use iChat but it’s completely useless for me because of the above said.
… cause making your own editor is way easier then right click, edit.
criticizing software for it’s faults is one thing, but this bashing software as a form of advocacy is silly. You don’t like microsoft, fine, don’t use their stuff; but making these unreasonable criticisms if anything makes people look silly
<quote>
“What spammers are you talking about?”
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,55795,00.html
those spammers.
</quote>
What a moron…
read the post #33 by
@juzio
(IP: —.woh.rr.com) – Posted on 2004-02-27 22:20:43
FYI: “copy con file.ext” – was there when there was no “edit”
<quote>Socialist democracies supporting capitalist monopoly through ignorance, convinience, and laziness. Now that’s funny.
At least there are concerted efforts going on in other parts of the world to offer choice and open standards. </quote>
Ever since the “other parts of the world” started electing baboons as presidents, the “Socialist democracies” have an obligation to question the choices … hmmm-aol-hmmm of the advanced democracies of “other parts of the world”
Hi
“M$
Jesus Christ, this is what gives open-source no credibility.
”
what are you blabbering about. open source is a development methodology. how is this related?. dont you consider the whole thing together?
apache has no credibility?
bind?
linux?
shut the troll
“… cause making your own editor is way easier then right click, edit.”
No, not easier, but notepad is inadequate. Not just inadequate, but impotent to do even the simplest things like proper cr/lf handling.
“criticizing software for it’s faults is one thing, but this bashing software as a form of advocacy is silly. You don’t like microsoft, fine, don’t use their stuff; but making these unreasonable criticisms if anything makes people look silly”
You’re talking about yourself here, right? Because you certainly aren’t talking about me. I was advocating NOTHING. And the only unreasonable criticisms here are *yours* as you feel the need to wave your arms in an attempt to distract from the real issue: messenger and movie maker (and notepad) are horrid pieces of crap. Just because you find them adequate means that you’re so complacent that you would rather settle for inferiority and be too lazy to look for something better, and that you’re lacking the talent to write your own. Your lack of demands for quality in software must mirror your life where you must be equally as acquiescent.
Almost every app that comes with Windows is sub-par at best, including IE.
MSN Messenger is pure garbage, and so is Movie Maker – Media Player isn’t much better.
IMHO, MS should just give up on the bundled apps and let OEMs/users decide which apps to through in there, as there are much better apps out there than Microsoft’s offerings. In this case, Trillian, MPEG VCR, and Media Player Classic (score one for open source.)
They gotta be kidding, every farmer and his dog uses MSN Messenger here, it’s all people know and it’s all they use. How can it be not popular? You have to look very hard to find someone who don’t use it. Really, as far as I know, everyone who has a computer and chats uses MSN Messenger in Belgium. I hate that freaking app, go Jabber
RE:
I’m not using Messenger. nothing to comment about MS declination of pop up messenging, but I prefer
prompt solicitation to communicate to be reserved for a higher level of priority. And mobile phones suites
better at such purposes. But i can understand the enthusiasm of the teeners for this new communication form. the sole reason why xp, mandatorely bought as an unwanted OEM parasite of a new pc, is still installed ( grub dual boot fedora ) is the existence of nice divx/xvid manipulating freewares that, iromically enough, don’ have their counterpart running on free os. the features of Movie maker a quite limited in comparison. My eperience of Belgian habits about the use of messenger is somehow different of yours. A majority, about 80 %, off the chatting belgians i know, don’t use messenger and your way to express your opinion in such absolute language, left me with the impression that you, every farmer and his dog, are barking their hate towards a majority of belgian pc owners.
(quote)
FYI: “copy con file.ext” – was there when there was no “edit”
(end quote)
d3wd, don’t be stupid, even dos 1.0 had edit, it was called edlin.
Movie Maker has the equivalent useability of notepad…aka worthless.
I guess it’s already been defended, but I think the Notepad featureset isn’t that bad. I think every OS needs a small plaintext editor.
The only really bad thing (until XP?) was the memory limit. Now in XP it’s still not perfect. It does seem to support large files, but it gets really slow. And the wordwrap doesn’t always update correctly after a resize. But ignoring the implementation problems they had, the idea of a minimal plaintext editor was fine.
P.S. One of the first things many people did when learning Win32 back when Win95 came out is make their own replacement Notepad. Mine was, oh, a below half the size, no memory limit, identical features/look, faster “Find”, (somehow) more responsive asm program. If only they adopted one of those…
P.P.S. I didn’t really defend Notepad that well, did I?
“M$
Jesus Christ, this is what gives open-source no credibility.”
And that post is what gives you no sense of humor :O
All I need windows for is for playing games. That’s really about it. But redmond won’t offer a product for people like me…and home doesn’t cut it -> 100 bucks shouldn’t buy you bloat, it should buy you state-of-the-art…but that’s just IMHO
foo
What I dislike about Messenger:
*Loads up URLs in IE. This despite my default browser being Mozilla Firefox 0.8. I never use IE (the most insecure, featureless browser on earth) except for Windwos Updates.
*Integrates with Outlook Express and IE’s offline/online status. It cannot even be shut down (or start up, when IE is set to offline) independently. Ridiculous.
*It is ad-infested. The main program window loads up those pretty little tabs (ads) from the web as well as any survey messages and whatnot that MS is running.
*It is integrated with the worst email service in the world: hotmail.com. Very small mailbox size, maximum spam (altho I’m told this has changed recently) and very fast de-activation times for non-used accounts so you upgrade to their paying service if not knowing any better. Good things there’s http://www.fastmail.fm, with IMAP support too.
*Finally, it uses more RAM than I’d like
That’s why I use http://www.miranda-im.org. ICQ, MSN, AIM, Jabber protocol support out-of-the-box. Lean and free, too.
They don’t use ms’s “best”features because ms intrudes…figure it out…popups suck, and does tracking personal habits…
I rather not use it. I’m using MSN Messenger instead. And I hardly use my camcorder but the software that comes with it is better than Movie Maker. There, answered? Heck, those aren’t the only XP “features” i don’t use – I use Opera as opposed to IE, for example.
You might also want to try out Gaim.
http://gaim.sourceforge.net/
Its what I use on my linux/windows boxes.
whoops sorry that subject was supposed to be “RE: there are alternatives to Messenger”
Until Windows 2000 MS wasn’t really too bad.
It felt a lot more ‘friendly’, down to the sounds, the general feeling that you weren’t treated like an idiot and that you were not being spied every moment, as it is the case with XP.
XP was a total departure from any previous approach, and a total mistake, IMO.
It feels incredibly bloated, unfriendly and the whole thing is a big piece of spyware.
Do they want to regain the confidence of their old customers?
They should go back to the Windows 98 or 2000 approach.
Instead they keep going more and more in the opposite direction. Good luck to them.
“Well, imagine that you travel a lot. You don’t have access to your own computer, only public computers. You can’t just install your favorite email client and setup your mail account… would that even be safe?
A webbased email service is more practical if you travel a lot. ”
http://www.mail2web.com <<< Here’s your answer. Allows you to have a pop3 account AND check it from any computer anywhere.
Until Windows 2000 MS wasn’t really too bad.
I guess that depends on where your priorities are. If you like efficiency, the old stuff is best. If you like reliablity, the newer stuff is better.
[Begin obvious]
I love Windows 95. It’s small (100MB regular, 25MB trimmed, 5MB gone crazy), it’s 10x more responsive and snappier than anything later, it barely uses any memory, and it’s simple. The only downsides are that it uses the registry for configuration, DLL hell, and that it’s very fragile. Good hardware, careful use… it still crashes unattended.
I like how XP rarely crashes. But with one small app minimized (or even recently closed) you try to preview a little 25k GIF… and it’s grinding, grinding, grinding… with 256MB of RAM! How do you come up with a 1 Gig OS that eats up 256 Meg of RAM? How?! And everything runs so slow… at 1.2GHz! At least it doesn’t crash.
[End obvious]
Whatever happened to the good ‘ol mainframe OSs? An OS prolly about a meg with five nines reliability and a decent CLI that (unlike UNIX) doesn’t let you accidently delete everything without–at least–a warning. Maybe we can all switch to the latest zOS or OpenVMS (what are the chances?), but (i’m getting dreamy here) have the really old versions put into public domain?
Stick a 2-5 Meg GUI onto it; something like FluxBox without X, minimal theming…
//Drool…
…
*It is ad-infested. The main program window loads up those pretty little tabs (ads) from the web as well as any survey messages and whatnot that MS is running.
…
= Options > Privacy > This is a …., dont display tabs.
On your advise tried the Miranda:
– No worky with Russian letteres in messages in ICQ
– On trying to connect to MSN service – “I am here” and still offline.
Hmmm, MSN Messenger is not so bad after all
the first line in my comment was the only aspect of my post responding to you, so you are correct in that you haven’t advocated anything. I meant that as more a general statement. In the future i’ll do my best to my it clear who I’m refering to on a line by line basis.
As for saying I distracted the issue by bringing in notepad, i believe the initial mention of notepad in this thread was “Movie Maker has the equivalent useability of notepad…aka worthless.” posted By Anonymous (IP: —.internetdsl.tpnet.pl) – Posted on 2004-02-27 23:14:55. In this same post it’s implied that microsoft is in a drug induced state and is unable to “… smell their own shiit”, which is a very convincing arguement. As for my being complacent because i don’t consider messenger or notepad to be “crap”, why should anyone have to replace what programs they use if it already serves all their needs?
We agree on almost everything, but one issue: XP rarely crashes? I have the opposite impression.
Just to make a couple of examples I can’t recall how many times Windows Explorer and IE have crashed.
I have 256 MB RAM and a Pentium 4, 2.66 GHz.
With my specs, indeed, XP feels very slow and bloated.
As to the future, for Longhorn they are recommending 1 Gig RAM! (because it hasn’t been optimized for performance yet, they say-but I bet that when it is finally out it won’t work with anything less than 500 MB RAM)
You need to go back to school. What other choices are there? And before you go blabbering about “Linux” ask yourself this: How many home users who can’t shut off the Messenger service by themselves are going to be able to hack CUPS config files just to get their printer working? Gee, ever since Windows 98 waaaay back in 1998 my machine simply knows a printer is there and I can print to it with no issues. Heh, not even Root Hat can do that more than 25% of the time. And how many actually want to learn Vi so they can edit /etc/X11/XF86Config just to get their video working? That’s right, not very many. If Windows can recognize pretty much most pieces of hardware and make them work with absolutely no intervention from the user, what does that make Linux? My guess would be very, very, VERY sucky. Just because you can run your bootable Linux distro and know how to type “ls” and “cd /” all day long does not make you a power-user. Feel free to share your opinion, but provide something a little more substantial than “microsoft Sucks”, because their “sucky” OS’s are on 97% of the computers in the world. Thank you for playing =]
I guess it’s already been defended, but I think the Notepad featureset isn’t that bad. I think every OS needs a small plaintext editor.
Notepad would be good for a simple text editor, except in some files, you can actually see the control codes and the format is all screwy – definitely not cool.
Also, if you’re having trouble with Windows XP running slow (especially on modern hardwarey), go here:
http://www.monroeworld.com/pchelp/xptweaks.php
XP is generally really fast, provided you do a little bit of surgery first
Also, if you’re experiencing crashes with XP, try getting all the crap out of the task tray and scan your system for malware. Beyond that, you’ve probably got:
1) A bad piece of hardware or
2) Bad driver(s)
From my experience, Windows XP with good hardware and good drivers doesn’t go down very often.
(Mocking exasperated XP user)
“No time to use Messenger…too busy getting rid of virus…”
Also, if you’re having trouble with Windows XP running slow… XP is generally really fast, provided you do a little bit of surgery first
Actually, I’ve already done all that. With the defaults, you could actually watch it draw. After tweaking, it’s just really sluggish.
People don’t use those features because why? Well, they don’t need to. Regular people are perfectly happy with what they have in windows and most are afraid of computers. Notepad isn’t so great because 99.99% of all people are happy with it or don’t care. The .01% that complain usually find alternatives, and microsoft as a business doesn’t care about this .01%. It’s not profitable to cater to the minority. The same goes with internet explorer and wmp and movie maker. It’s why their so basic, but the do the job for average joe.
People are happy with ie and wmp. If they weren’t they WOULD find alternatives. They might even think the alternatives are better, but the effort isn’t worth it to find and compare them. Regular people just have better things to do then mess with their computers. They have family, friends, parties, and jobs. To them, a computer is just like their car. Is that so hard to understand?
Microsoft is damned if they do and damned if they don’t on this issue. They can improve their bundled programs and face accusations of anti-competitive or water them down for the average joe. Windows with a good firewall? “They’re abusing their monopoly. Bill Gates is evil.” Windows with a crappy firewall? “This firewall’s a joke. Bill Gates is the stupidest man in the world and he runs the crappiest company.” There will always be whiners no matter what microsoft does. Will they always bash microsoft no matter what? Sounds like what the media does to any US President. Clinton, Bush, whoever.
Microsoft,
PLEASE make your operating systems smaller, more efficient and secure. Otherwise, we’ll switch to Linux which gives us the choice of NOT INSTALLING COMPONENTS WE DON’T WANT.
Forcing your previously loyal customers to eat everything you produce instead of giving them CHOICE will drive them to competitors.
Sell a streamlined, efficient, secure Windows XP. And then sell or give away extras like Windows Messenger. If you do this, we will stay on Windows–otherwise, we’ll switch to other platforms that give us the choice of not running a bunch of bug-ridden, memory-hogging, UNUSED components.
Please bundle all the “entertainment” features into a Plus Pack. You’ll probably generate additional revenues that way for things you’re currently giving away, and at the same time keeping others who want a streamlined, secure OS happy.
Who is we? You and two other people who already use Linux?
Daniel wrote:
= Options > Privacy > This is a …., dont display tabs.
Yes, but there is no “do not display ads” or “do not display annoying text messages in my main window” checkboxes.
On your advise tried the Miranda:
– No worky with Russian letteres in messages in ICQ
– On trying to connect to MSN service – “I am here” and still offline.
I am unsure about russian letters. Wait for improvements I guess. Maybe that’s tackled in a plug-in. For me, Miranda is the perfect application. It runs in its own directory. No installation and the ability to store it on floppy or flash disc and run it anywhere.
Re: “I am here” and not online
That is merely your status message. You click on the little “person” icon do set your status to online or offline – it doesn’t do it automatically by default as u start up the application. Or you do the same by going to the Status menu.
Also check your settings in the Miranda “M” menu. You will find lots of easy-to-configure goodies in there, including “send messages on ENTER” in the Events/Messaging part (I prefer this method of sending messages for icq), and “do not popup dialog asking for new message” in the Status > Status Messages part of Options, which will prevent the Status Message popping up whenever you start it.
It also has very powerful logging features and heaps of other goodies. I don’t use webcams or voice so I’m not missing out on anything.
The point is, there is choice. And I like Miranda the best (so far) because it frees me from laborious installations, ads, convoluted configuration and bloated applications. If I format C drive, I am back in business instantly by simply running it from its own directory on D drive, or a removable drive like a floppy. If I want to delete profiles, I just delete the myprofile.dat from the root directory it runs in, and create a new one (or not). Very simple and very clean. It also obeys my default browser choices and does not seek integration with apps it has no business integrating with.
‘We agree on almost everything, but one issue: XP rarely crashes? I have the opposite impression.
Just to make a couple of examples I can’t recall how many times Windows Explorer and IE have crashed.
I have 256 MB RAM and a Pentium 4, 2.66 GHz.
With my specs, indeed, XP feels very slow and bloated.
As to the future, for Longhorn they are recommending 1 Gig RAM! (because it hasn’t been optimized for performance yet, they say-but I bet that when it is finally out it won’t work with anything less than 500 MB RAM)”
I don’t understand. Your specs are above average. You have plenty of ram for average use. XP uses about 90-120 mb. It depends on what kind of things you do. If you do lots of ram intensive stuff, then you need more ram. 512mb is a good amount for most people. 1-2 GB if you do lots of video editing. What exactly do you do on the computer? Go to neowin.net and check their nt/xp client or hardware forums. Then there’s arstechnica.com, tomshardware.com, anandtech.com, etc. Lot of places. Be specific when asking for help. Check http://www.blackviper.com for information on xp services. You can save quiet a bit of ram shutting down unneeded services. I have 512mb but I rarely peak 256.
When longhorn comes out don’t worry about specs. Computers will be a lot more powerful then and 1-2 gb ram will be standard. Ram and computers will be cheap. The minimum will probably be about 256, but you’ll be able to shutdown unneded stuff like winfs.
If you want a less bloated xp, check litepc.com.
I’ve seen this in Win2K and WinXP. There’s a folder called ‘microsoft frontpage’ in Program Files, sorry PROGRA~1. I *can’t* delete it.
Does anyone know why?
Just wondering how many people read the linked articles? Seems to be a lot of kneejerk reactions to the summary which implies that the underused features are Messenger and Movie Maker, when in fact Remote Assistance and Movie Maker 2 are the subjects of the piece. Remote Assistance is incredibly useful for helping out those who can’t wrap their head ’round any other IM – let alone a simple VNC variant. In regard to Movie Maker, the second iteration is a fairly significant improvement – still very restrictive, but again, it’s catering to a pretty inexperienced market.
Well, in order to like XP I’d need to change almost everything, down even to the sounds. And how do I change XP feeling like a huge piece of spyware?
I’d rather go back to Windows 2000.
Actually at MS they are aware of people not wanting to move from older OSes, and if they have to, why yet another MS product, expensive, buggy and bloated?
And if you are a developer or an administrator you’ll certainly hate the activation and all the other restrictions.
i’ve been using XP since devils own release.
I’m a geek, and I use os-x, slackware, freebsd and xp. I’ve explored XP pretty much in debth, and I think it makes a fine platform for 3rd party stuff, but it’s rare that i use the built in extras.
built in zip. nope
built in movie maker. nope
built in messenger. nope
built in browser. double nope
built in mail client. not only nope, but hell nope
built in firewall. lol
built in eye candy. nope,turn it off. looks like 2k again.
(lots of other stuff to go on about not using)
ok. now that i’ve disrespected xp, time to own up to some stuff….direct-x, most definitely. this is the leading games platform, for a reason. how about stability? yes. very stable, especially if i turn off all the extra crap, some already mentioned.
xp’s strongest point is that it’s a stable, flexible platform for someone elses stuff.
i know microsoft wants to expand their monopoly from the basic os, browser & office suite…but that’s not gonna happen any time soon. the juggernaut is slowing.
and that’s ok, cause they ain’t going away anytime soon, and we don’t want them too….but we don’t want them devouring everything in site either.
happy medium…yea!!!!!! (but i don’t think that makes the stockholders cheer)
I want to know what the xerox folder is for. You can’t delete it. Does anyone know what’s it for?
“I want to know what the xerox folder is for. You can’t delete it. Does anyone know what’s it for?”
Something you installed. It is not on any of the 3 machines I have running XP Pro. A printer or something most likely.
the whole msn messenger/windows messenger wouldn’t be such a bad IM system if it didn’t allow people to change their visable screen name. i know a few people who use it and they constantly change their name to screennames that are sentences. i like how with aim, you have 1 screenname and that doesn’t change.
Ugh, Windows PX reloaded.
My computer runs much faster and is a lot more stable in windoze 2000. AND I’m trying to get microsoft out of my way, so no more dependency for me, please.
What I need is a good softmodem driver for FreeBSD…
No it was there when I reformatted the hard drive. It’s an empty folder that you can’t delete. I don’t have any software with xerox.
“I’ve seen this in Win2K and WinXP. There’s a folder called ‘microsoft frontpage’ in Program Files, sorry PROGRA~1. I *can’t* delete it.
Does anyone know why?”
Well the bin folder is empty so it’s not taking any disk space, why worry? My guess it’s a hangover from earlier Windows versions which did include a cut-down version of Frontpage. BTW if your “Program Files” folder is displaying in 8.3 format you have other more serious problems.
I have 256 MB RAM and a Pentium 4, 2.66 GHz.
With my specs, indeed, XP feels very slow and bloated.
If you have visted the page I linked in a previous post and done everything therein, then I would say there is something else wrong, because I run XP on an Athlon 1.2ghz w/384MB of RAM and have none of the speed problems you mention, and I don’t think my extra 128MB of RAM makes that much difference, since I rarely go above the 256 mark.
Of course, when you say it’s slow, I have no idea what you’re comparing it with – BeOS maybe? XP feels much more response to me than either KDE or Gnome on the same machine. Of course, I’m not trying to bash the latter … and in fact, I like both of their desktops better (for the most part), just not as fast (IMHO).
You can bitch all you want. The fact is, people using MSN Messenger find it useful. Who are we to tell them they are idiots? You know, SOME people have actual lives and couldn’t give a rats ass about a piece of software. Go outside sometimes people. Please.
http://www.ipmessenger.com/
quote: “The REALLY sad thing I’ve noticed is the number of adults who use hotmail as their primary Email account, even at home. It’s really depressing that so many computer users are ignorant of the advantages of using a POP3/IMAP account with a real mail client, or are just too lazy to bother setting it up.”
Well, imagine that you travel a lot. You don’t have access to your own computer, only public computers. You can’t just install your favorite email client and setup your mail account… would that even be safe? A webbased email service is more practical if you travel a lot.
What ISP doesn’t provide a webmail interface these days? I think that even most Universities have their own webmail interface too.
Darius: …when you say it’s slow, I have no idea what you’re comparing it with – BeOS maybe? XP feels much more responsive to me than either KDE or Gnome on the same machine.
Take my systems for example. My XP machine (1.2GHz + 256MB RAM) runs exactly like my fragmented and unkept Pentium 75Mhz + 16MB Win95 machine–and this is after every tweak is done and every unnecessary service is turned off in XP. If you have experience with something like that, it might give you an idea.
As for KDE and Gnome, I haven’t run them at > 1 Ghz, but at 350Mhz (and on a slower video card) they blow the XP box away at plain 2D window management. You could try Accelerated-X from Xi; and you won’t believe how much tweaking you can do to XFree that can really help. There be FAQs.
I india many still use yahoo messenger. In work place as well as home.
Take my systems for example. My XP machine (1.2GHz + 256MB RAM) runs exactly like my fragmented and unkept Pentium 75Mhz + 16MB Win95 machine–and this is after every tweak is done and every unnecessary service is turned off in XP. If you have experience with something like that, it might give you an idea.
As for KDE and Gnome, I haven’t run them at > 1 Ghz, but at 350Mhz (and on a slower video card) they blow the XP box away at plain 2D window management.
I’d venture to guess then that there is something wrong with your XP box if it is as slow as you describe, as I’ve had it running fairly respectably on a P3-450 w/192MB RAM, after tweaking.
I have no idea how fast KDE/Gnome are once properly tweaked – I would say that XP untweaked is faster than KDE/Gnome untweaked. Now, I’m not trying to get into a pissing contest here, but just saying that if you’re seeing XP tweaked running faster than either KDE or Gnome untweaked on a slower box, something is wrong somewhere. Of course, from the way it sounds, you’ve got KDE/Gnome tweaked all to hell .. on which case, I have no idea how fast/slow it would be
but just saying that if you’re seeing XP tweaked running slower than either KDE or Gnome untweaked (with KDE/Gnome running) on a slower box, something is wrong somewhere.
I’d venture to guess then that there is something wrong with your XP box if it is as slow as you describe, as I’ve had it running fairly respectably on a P3-450 w/192MB RAM, after tweaking.
This XP box is the only one I’ve got that I didn’t put together myself (ignoring the Tandy 80×88). I’ll give it a good once over and concede that XP should be running faster.