Jupiter Jones said:
The car analogy may be valid.
However Ford (Microsoft) did not make this particular car, another
manufacturer (unknown by the OP) manufactured it.
Ford will not support for free another unknown brand and neither
should Microsoft.
Everybody here seems to believe that Bill is "such a swell guy". 8-()
I don't know but maybe most of you work for him as far as I know.
I had always thought that OEM licensing was to benefit third party
vendors by lowering the costs of parts and software due to the large
quantities they buy. Shifting of the support to these third party vendors
is also very logical. But when it comes to the end-user, every thing should
work perfectly (yeah! but,). These are the people who make folks like
Dell, Gateway, and Microsoft rich. And in return these end users should
be treated with the utmost of respect. A happy customer will probably
come back again. Whether it turns out to be legal or not (which is yet
to be determined), interfering with the ability of an end-user to repair,
upgrade, customize, or update his equipment is probably one of the
stupidest mistakes Microsoft has ever made. Apple and Linux are both
gaining market share and that pace is increasing. Mr. Gates has what I'll
call a "piracy paranoia complex." Piracy is going to happen no matter what.
But it can't be as rampant as Bill claims or else he wouldn't be very rich!
The company should take the approach that the cost of the small amount
of piracy normally expected anyway is going to be far outweighed by the
income from the much vaster pool of customers who legitimately buy the
licensed copies!! I noticed in the EULA that in one place it states that
"Microsoft has said that if it ever becomes not worthwhile for them to keep
this activation system going, they will take steps to allow users to disable
it."
I cringe when I try to imagine the amount of money spent to put this
activation
system in place (hundreds of thousands of man-years, tens of millions of
dollars to support an unbelievable amount of record-keeping, and the worst
loss of all is its resultant erosion of the customer base itself. Microsoft
software
has a reputation for containing some of the strangest software bugs of any
company in the word. Concentrate on putting out a high quality product and
go out of your way to do whatever it takes to keep your customers happy
and Microsoft would stand to gain a hell of a lot more than anything lost
to a little piracy. Most people are VERY distrustful of things like machines
"calling in" and reporting mysterious information. They get very irate when
stuff just simply doesn't work right then compound that with an 80 minute
wait to
get through to customer service for help. So what do you suppose the
reaction
is to something that (for them) amounts to blatant extortion? If I were to
go into
the business of providing "fixed" copies of Windows-XP (or whatever), now
couldn't be a better time to do it. Take a stroll around the Internet.
Everywhere
you turn, folks are having all manner of "major" problems with Microsoft's
software.
And who do they turn to for advice on fixing these problems? It's not
Microsoft
Customer Service! They post to news groups, tell each other "war stories,"
and
for lack of satisfactory resolution of these problems, turn to whatever is
the easiest,
cheapest, and fastest method to get going again. And guess what? All that
piracy
Bill is worried about is exploding into an industry of its own!! Why?
Because to
the average Joe, the Hackers are providing far better support than Microsoft
is
capable of. Joe only wants it fixed, hassle-free, and inexpensive. These
three
things in combination is the force driving a sudden out-of-control black
market
in stolen, hacked, and pirated software products. It will only get much
worse Bill,
stop it now while you still can...
- G.
