Why Do I Continue To Bother With Microsoft?
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I try to be a team player, and have since Windows 2.o. But every time I try to use their products, they fuck it up.:mad: MS Updates have destroyed every computer I've ever owned at least once. Visual Studio has more workarounds than features; it takes more pages to print the errata for each release than to print the entire Help contents. The latest fiasco happened tonight. Well, actually, over the past four days. I tried to look up something in the help system in Visual Web Developer Express; it refused to show it to me - 404 error. I'm used to that. But it did tell me that I have to install SP1, so I tried. That crashed because I don't have Windows Server 2003 SP2 installed. So I installed SP2 like a good sheep, and that took an entire night. Going back to the VWD Express update, I managed that okay - it only took another full night. Tonight I tried to look up instructions in the Help system on using Master Pages, and sure enough - File Not Found. So back to the download site to find the MSDN Express page... I found it, downloaded it, and tried to install it. After about a half hour or so, it crashed, informing me that another installation was in progress and it could not continue. Of course I sent the usual error report to Microsoft - I hope their server crashes. If there's anything still running by way of installation programs, it's their own garbage. In contrast, a friend of mine is taking a class using Adobe Dreamweaver CS3, and I've been helping her a bit with it. She downloaded it without trouble on an underpowered XP Home e-Machine, installed it without any difficulty, and built a very nice website in about 15 hours. It just works. Microsoft, get a friggin clue - we don't need products that are delivered incomplete, that we have to fight with to make them work even marginally. Give us products that do the job and forget technical elegance. You're not very good at it, we don't need it, and we all would be much more productive if we didn't have to spend most of our time trying to get your crap to work as advertised. Maybe it's time to say "Goodbye" to Microsoft for good, but after 30 years of trying to make a relationship work that's really hard. But it's harder still to realize that only one of us has been trying...
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
Roger Wright wrote:
Maybe it's time to say "Goodbye" to Microsoft for good,
Are you ready to hand over half of what you've earned in 30 years ;P
"For fifty bucks I'd put my face in their soup and blow." - George Costanza
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Are you talking about the dark side of a fruit (that shall remain nameless), or a web footed creature?
- S 50 cups of coffee and you know it's on! A post a day, keeps the white coats away!
IIRC, lauren's all penguin :-)
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I try to be a team player, and have since Windows 2.o. But every time I try to use their products, they fuck it up.:mad: MS Updates have destroyed every computer I've ever owned at least once. Visual Studio has more workarounds than features; it takes more pages to print the errata for each release than to print the entire Help contents. The latest fiasco happened tonight. Well, actually, over the past four days. I tried to look up something in the help system in Visual Web Developer Express; it refused to show it to me - 404 error. I'm used to that. But it did tell me that I have to install SP1, so I tried. That crashed because I don't have Windows Server 2003 SP2 installed. So I installed SP2 like a good sheep, and that took an entire night. Going back to the VWD Express update, I managed that okay - it only took another full night. Tonight I tried to look up instructions in the Help system on using Master Pages, and sure enough - File Not Found. So back to the download site to find the MSDN Express page... I found it, downloaded it, and tried to install it. After about a half hour or so, it crashed, informing me that another installation was in progress and it could not continue. Of course I sent the usual error report to Microsoft - I hope their server crashes. If there's anything still running by way of installation programs, it's their own garbage. In contrast, a friend of mine is taking a class using Adobe Dreamweaver CS3, and I've been helping her a bit with it. She downloaded it without trouble on an underpowered XP Home e-Machine, installed it without any difficulty, and built a very nice website in about 15 hours. It just works. Microsoft, get a friggin clue - we don't need products that are delivered incomplete, that we have to fight with to make them work even marginally. Give us products that do the job and forget technical elegance. You're not very good at it, we don't need it, and we all would be much more productive if we didn't have to spend most of our time trying to get your crap to work as advertised. Maybe it's time to say "Goodbye" to Microsoft for good, but after 30 years of trying to make a relationship work that's really hard. But it's harder still to realize that only one of us has been trying...
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
I hear ya, brother. But then, the grass is greener on the other side only because they used lead paint.
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I try to be a team player, and have since Windows 2.o. But every time I try to use their products, they fuck it up.:mad: MS Updates have destroyed every computer I've ever owned at least once. Visual Studio has more workarounds than features; it takes more pages to print the errata for each release than to print the entire Help contents. The latest fiasco happened tonight. Well, actually, over the past four days. I tried to look up something in the help system in Visual Web Developer Express; it refused to show it to me - 404 error. I'm used to that. But it did tell me that I have to install SP1, so I tried. That crashed because I don't have Windows Server 2003 SP2 installed. So I installed SP2 like a good sheep, and that took an entire night. Going back to the VWD Express update, I managed that okay - it only took another full night. Tonight I tried to look up instructions in the Help system on using Master Pages, and sure enough - File Not Found. So back to the download site to find the MSDN Express page... I found it, downloaded it, and tried to install it. After about a half hour or so, it crashed, informing me that another installation was in progress and it could not continue. Of course I sent the usual error report to Microsoft - I hope their server crashes. If there's anything still running by way of installation programs, it's their own garbage. In contrast, a friend of mine is taking a class using Adobe Dreamweaver CS3, and I've been helping her a bit with it. She downloaded it without trouble on an underpowered XP Home e-Machine, installed it without any difficulty, and built a very nice website in about 15 hours. It just works. Microsoft, get a friggin clue - we don't need products that are delivered incomplete, that we have to fight with to make them work even marginally. Give us products that do the job and forget technical elegance. You're not very good at it, we don't need it, and we all would be much more productive if we didn't have to spend most of our time trying to get your crap to work as advertised. Maybe it's time to say "Goodbye" to Microsoft for good, but after 30 years of trying to make a relationship work that's really hard. But it's harder still to realize that only one of us has been trying...
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
I think it depends on what you actually do with the computer and what software you install. Usually, if you have no paranoid antivirus / system cleaning programs, everything runs really well. Personally, I use beta software etc, except for Visual Studio and .Net Framework and run into no greater issues. The only thing that irritated me was when I wanted to try out Vista Business just after release on my older computer (Athlon 2500+, 2GB ram, slow disk) and it was a FAIL. Windows Server 2003 was so much better. Pre-Windows2000 crashes were frequent, but it was long time ago and I'd like not to focus on it. Now I have XP & VS 2005 on my work computer, Vista Business 64bit SP1 & VS 2008 at home and I think it's a good improvement. I think they make better use of my dual-core and 4GB of RAM. In terms of development "speed" local installation of MSDN is a must. It has some errors but it's fast and you have to check online help too, like CodeProject articles. I'd also recommend ReSharper & ANTS Profiler for .Net work, but I don't know if they're useful for web projects. There might be also some problems with Express editions I think.
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I try to be a team player, and have since Windows 2.o. But every time I try to use their products, they fuck it up.:mad: MS Updates have destroyed every computer I've ever owned at least once. Visual Studio has more workarounds than features; it takes more pages to print the errata for each release than to print the entire Help contents. The latest fiasco happened tonight. Well, actually, over the past four days. I tried to look up something in the help system in Visual Web Developer Express; it refused to show it to me - 404 error. I'm used to that. But it did tell me that I have to install SP1, so I tried. That crashed because I don't have Windows Server 2003 SP2 installed. So I installed SP2 like a good sheep, and that took an entire night. Going back to the VWD Express update, I managed that okay - it only took another full night. Tonight I tried to look up instructions in the Help system on using Master Pages, and sure enough - File Not Found. So back to the download site to find the MSDN Express page... I found it, downloaded it, and tried to install it. After about a half hour or so, it crashed, informing me that another installation was in progress and it could not continue. Of course I sent the usual error report to Microsoft - I hope their server crashes. If there's anything still running by way of installation programs, it's their own garbage. In contrast, a friend of mine is taking a class using Adobe Dreamweaver CS3, and I've been helping her a bit with it. She downloaded it without trouble on an underpowered XP Home e-Machine, installed it without any difficulty, and built a very nice website in about 15 hours. It just works. Microsoft, get a friggin clue - we don't need products that are delivered incomplete, that we have to fight with to make them work even marginally. Give us products that do the job and forget technical elegance. You're not very good at it, we don't need it, and we all would be much more productive if we didn't have to spend most of our time trying to get your crap to work as advertised. Maybe it's time to say "Goodbye" to Microsoft for good, but after 30 years of trying to make a relationship work that's really hard. But it's harder still to realize that only one of us has been trying...
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
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IIRC, lauren's all penguin :-)
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I think I will... When are you coming to visit again? Temps are down now, mornings < 100°F. But back on topic- How do I smoothly remove Windows and continue to function?
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
Roger Wright wrote:
How do I smoothly remove Windows and continue to function?
I've started to make initial investigations into the non-ms world. It started 2 years ago when I decided to use open office instead of MS. This summer I removed windows and installed Ubuntu. (and I'm not talking VM's or partitions here. I installed Ubuntu on my home PC as my only OS. running it on a partition makes it too tempting to switch back to windows when the going gets tough. There's less temptation if you know switching back to windows involves a few hours of installations). It's got some rough edges, but I didn't really have any difficulties doing my general day to day computing stuff. Next I plan on doing my next project in a non-ms language. (Possibly Java as I fancy doing something with Android). I'm still 100% .net at work, but I'm slowly learning what the other side looks like.
Simon
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I hear ya, brother. But then, the grass is greener on the other side only because they used lead paint.
Shit! That's why they kept saying not to inhale...
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! VCF Blog
-
I try to be a team player, and have since Windows 2.o. But every time I try to use their products, they fuck it up.:mad: MS Updates have destroyed every computer I've ever owned at least once. Visual Studio has more workarounds than features; it takes more pages to print the errata for each release than to print the entire Help contents. The latest fiasco happened tonight. Well, actually, over the past four days. I tried to look up something in the help system in Visual Web Developer Express; it refused to show it to me - 404 error. I'm used to that. But it did tell me that I have to install SP1, so I tried. That crashed because I don't have Windows Server 2003 SP2 installed. So I installed SP2 like a good sheep, and that took an entire night. Going back to the VWD Express update, I managed that okay - it only took another full night. Tonight I tried to look up instructions in the Help system on using Master Pages, and sure enough - File Not Found. So back to the download site to find the MSDN Express page... I found it, downloaded it, and tried to install it. After about a half hour or so, it crashed, informing me that another installation was in progress and it could not continue. Of course I sent the usual error report to Microsoft - I hope their server crashes. If there's anything still running by way of installation programs, it's their own garbage. In contrast, a friend of mine is taking a class using Adobe Dreamweaver CS3, and I've been helping her a bit with it. She downloaded it without trouble on an underpowered XP Home e-Machine, installed it without any difficulty, and built a very nice website in about 15 hours. It just works. Microsoft, get a friggin clue - we don't need products that are delivered incomplete, that we have to fight with to make them work even marginally. Give us products that do the job and forget technical elegance. You're not very good at it, we don't need it, and we all would be much more productive if we didn't have to spend most of our time trying to get your crap to work as advertised. Maybe it's time to say "Goodbye" to Microsoft for good, but after 30 years of trying to make a relationship work that's really hard. But it's harder still to realize that only one of us has been trying...
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
Roger Wright wrote:
That crashed because I don't have Windows Server 2003 SP2 installed.
Running Visual Studio on a server OS..?
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I try to be a team player, and have since Windows 2.o. But every time I try to use their products, they fuck it up.:mad: MS Updates have destroyed every computer I've ever owned at least once. Visual Studio has more workarounds than features; it takes more pages to print the errata for each release than to print the entire Help contents. The latest fiasco happened tonight. Well, actually, over the past four days. I tried to look up something in the help system in Visual Web Developer Express; it refused to show it to me - 404 error. I'm used to that. But it did tell me that I have to install SP1, so I tried. That crashed because I don't have Windows Server 2003 SP2 installed. So I installed SP2 like a good sheep, and that took an entire night. Going back to the VWD Express update, I managed that okay - it only took another full night. Tonight I tried to look up instructions in the Help system on using Master Pages, and sure enough - File Not Found. So back to the download site to find the MSDN Express page... I found it, downloaded it, and tried to install it. After about a half hour or so, it crashed, informing me that another installation was in progress and it could not continue. Of course I sent the usual error report to Microsoft - I hope their server crashes. If there's anything still running by way of installation programs, it's their own garbage. In contrast, a friend of mine is taking a class using Adobe Dreamweaver CS3, and I've been helping her a bit with it. She downloaded it without trouble on an underpowered XP Home e-Machine, installed it without any difficulty, and built a very nice website in about 15 hours. It just works. Microsoft, get a friggin clue - we don't need products that are delivered incomplete, that we have to fight with to make them work even marginally. Give us products that do the job and forget technical elegance. You're not very good at it, we don't need it, and we all would be much more productive if we didn't have to spend most of our time trying to get your crap to work as advertised. Maybe it's time to say "Goodbye" to Microsoft for good, but after 30 years of trying to make a relationship work that's really hard. But it's harder still to realize that only one of us has been trying...
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
If you think Adobe the CS3 suite is not resource hungry, than you haven't used it. I can barely make it run at all as soon as I have started Flash CS3, it is such a hog I can have 4 visual studios running for the same amount of resources. It is also one of the most difficult programs I have tried installing when their licensing does not work properly and we even had to call to get it registered before it started working (locks you out after 30 days). The Adobe update is even worse, if it even happens to start just because you start one of the program your computer will totally bog down as it takes a full CPU doing whatever it does, and every now and then the updates fail to install. I don't recoqnise at all the problems you have had with MS update (had one problem just recently where nvidia drivers weren't updating properly, but that's the first time I had problem.). Visual studio has alot less flaws than for instance eclipse does and the editor in adobe flash is a joke, 30 years of computing that's what they came up with as an editor for action script? You are doing something wrong if you have all those problems I would say. that's where you should start looking...
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Roger Wright wrote:
How do I smoothly remove Windows and continue to function?
I've started to make initial investigations into the non-ms world. It started 2 years ago when I decided to use open office instead of MS. This summer I removed windows and installed Ubuntu. (and I'm not talking VM's or partitions here. I installed Ubuntu on my home PC as my only OS. running it on a partition makes it too tempting to switch back to windows when the going gets tough. There's less temptation if you know switching back to windows involves a few hours of installations). It's got some rough edges, but I didn't really have any difficulties doing my general day to day computing stuff. Next I plan on doing my next project in a non-ms language. (Possibly Java as I fancy doing something with Android). I'm still 100% .net at work, but I'm slowly learning what the other side looks like.
Simon
Is it really greener over there? :)
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
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You know your "system" is too complex, when no one can write help for it.
- S 50 cups of coffee and you know it's on! A post a day, keeps the white coats away!
It's not that no one can write hekp for it, it's that the system can't find the help files it just installed!
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
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Roger Wright wrote:
Maybe it's time to say "Goodbye" to Microsoft for good,
Are you ready to hand over half of what you've earned in 30 years ;P
"For fifty bucks I'd put my face in their soup and blow." - George Costanza
Hmmmm... I'm not sure how to respond to that. When I wrote software for a living, Microsoft was still peddling BASIC for the Altair8800. My stuff was done on HP minis using RTEx/VM for an operating system. The only time since then that I made money on software was using Paradox, a Borland product that worked quite a bit better than Access. The only income I've made directly from a Microsoft product was gained via fixing damaged PCs running MS products, many of which died of self-inflicted wounds.
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
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I think it depends on what you actually do with the computer and what software you install. Usually, if you have no paranoid antivirus / system cleaning programs, everything runs really well. Personally, I use beta software etc, except for Visual Studio and .Net Framework and run into no greater issues. The only thing that irritated me was when I wanted to try out Vista Business just after release on my older computer (Athlon 2500+, 2GB ram, slow disk) and it was a FAIL. Windows Server 2003 was so much better. Pre-Windows2000 crashes were frequent, but it was long time ago and I'd like not to focus on it. Now I have XP & VS 2005 on my work computer, Vista Business 64bit SP1 & VS 2008 at home and I think it's a good improvement. I think they make better use of my dual-core and 4GB of RAM. In terms of development "speed" local installation of MSDN is a must. It has some errors but it's fast and you have to check online help too, like CodeProject articles. I'd also recommend ReSharper & ANTS Profiler for .Net work, but I don't know if they're useful for web projects. There might be also some problems with Express editions I think.
Marcin Smialek wrote:
local installation of MSDN is a must.
I agree, but the product can't find its own installation of MSDN Express.
Marcin Smialek wrote:
There might be also some problems with Express editions I think.
I'm thinking the same, which is why I'm uninstalling them tonight completely and starting over (for the last time).
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
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Shit! That's why they kept saying not to inhale...
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! VCF Blog
:laugh:
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
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I hear ya, brother. But then, the grass is greener on the other side only because they used lead paint.
That's okay with me; I think the lead paint tastes better.
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
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Roger Wright wrote:
That crashed because I don't have Windows Server 2003 SP2 installed.
Running Visual Studio on a server OS..?
Is there a rule against that I didn't read? Even Win2k3Server has a Workstation service running; it just doesn't get the priority that the Server services do. Perhaps that's a case MS didn't consider in the design, though...
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
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If you think Adobe the CS3 suite is not resource hungry, than you haven't used it. I can barely make it run at all as soon as I have started Flash CS3, it is such a hog I can have 4 visual studios running for the same amount of resources. It is also one of the most difficult programs I have tried installing when their licensing does not work properly and we even had to call to get it registered before it started working (locks you out after 30 days). The Adobe update is even worse, if it even happens to start just because you start one of the program your computer will totally bog down as it takes a full CPU doing whatever it does, and every now and then the updates fail to install. I don't recoqnise at all the problems you have had with MS update (had one problem just recently where nvidia drivers weren't updating properly, but that's the first time I had problem.). Visual studio has alot less flaws than for instance eclipse does and the editor in adobe flash is a joke, 30 years of computing that's what they came up with as an editor for action script? You are doing something wrong if you have all those problems I would say. that's where you should start looking...
I don't recall mentioning resources, but I have plenty available. Thanks for the tip about licensing, though. My friend has ordered the full edition and may have trouble licensing it; I'll warn her and be available to help.
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
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Is there a rule against that I didn't read? Even Win2k3Server has a Workstation service running; it just doesn't get the priority that the Server services do. Perhaps that's a case MS didn't consider in the design, though...
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
Roger Wright wrote:
Is there a rule against that I didn't read?
None that I know of, besides that Windows Server is not meant to be used as a workstation, though some people do this. I know my clients don't want Visual Studio on their servers, I would also try to steer away from it. I don't think that Microsoft planned for people to program on a server, so you may be as well causing such problems yourself. ;P
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Is it really greener over there? :)
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
No greener. It has it's faults. They are just different kinds of faults. It's like Lego & Macarno, both work, both have their styles, advantages and disadvantages, there is an element of personal preference involved in choosing, and sometimes one is better in certain areas than the other, and sometimes an optimal solution could involve elements of both. I love .Net & Windows (& Lego), but that doesn't stop me wanting to learn Java & Linux. :)
Simon
