The point of this according to the MSFT PM of the Vista Launch team, Nick
White, in the quote I put on this group yesterday, was to increase the
ability to use Windows Vista. The CPP builds availalbe were sure similar
enough to RTM and contrary to some peoples' party mantra bugs in those
builds were not all fixed and some persist.
It's just a way of getting things fixed and out of the way or helping with
the same problems we help with here if and there's a big if and a
hypothetical what Mr. Urban didn't address weren't true.
MSFT phone support that isn't "specialized" for a subscription aay Technet,
MSDN, a Value Pack purchase or a higher level partner subscription purchased
like Gold Partner, etc. is handled by a contractor Convergys of Ohio and
almost all calls in the US and many other places go to India.
Before some airhead jumps up and down and there always are some and says "Oh
you're ethnically biased against Indians" yada da yada da yada don't make a
bozo head of hourself and do that.
Indians in my country are usually if anything people who excel, achieve, and
lead in huge proportions.
My gripe is with Tech Support that works for Convergys who happen to be
Indians for the most part--they have them in Canada (better but it depends
on who you get--certainly the English is good there. The Convergys of Ohio
(Cinncinnaiti) call centers in India are staffed with people who are poorly
trained if at all (it's difficult to tell) on Windows, Office and anything
they attempt to troubleshoot. This is compounded with and confounded by the
fact that the vast majority speak English so poorly that it's unintelligible
and there vocabulary is very limited. I test them on purpose to show myself
MSFT exerts no quality control on them from any campus here or abroad.
I can't speak the hundreds of languages in Northern or Southern India, but
I'm not in a job that requires me to phone support people in those languages
either. Whenever I think I can help with here, I attempt to use English--
or something close.
You can propose routine problems to them that would be knocked out of the
park here, and they have no clue and often tell the caller to format the
box. They answer "okay" to almost every question/
This says to me MSFT does not put a tech support budget for the general
public ot tech support for the general public into any priority category.
That's be a bout 800 million Windows XP users and a similar if not greater
amount hoped for for Vista--the MSFT slides porject about 400 million public
Vista users by 24 months--i.e. non-enterprise- or midlevel busines-i.e. home
and small buisness. The definitions for computers and servers for those
designations exist and they may be changed soon at least in the mid buisness
level.
CH
