VS.NET 2005 hotfixes?

[Carlos J. Quintero [VB MVP]]

you will get charged, your payment will be canceled later on or you'll
get your money back if it took too long and hte payment fell through.

In Spain Microsoft does not require to provide payment information if you
tell in advance that you are going to request a hotfix described in a KB
article. I have done that several times....


--

Best regards,

Carlos J. Quintero

MZ-Tools: Productivity add-ins for Visual Studio 2005, Visual Studio .NET,
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[Carlos J. Quintero [VB MVP]]

Hi Frans,

I agree with you that hotfixes are not a solution and I share your
frustration. The fact that the first VS.NET 2003 Service pack will be
released in 2006 says it all...

--

Best regards,

Carlos J. Quintero

MZ-Tools: Productivity add-ins for Visual Studio 2005, Visual Studio .NET,
VB6, VB5 and VBA
You can code, design and document much faster in VB.NET, C#, C++ or VJ#
Free resources for add-in developers:
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[Cor Ligthert [MVP]]

Frans,

You sell your own software for a living? If so, ask yourself if your
customers are willing to pay you first and then you look into their
bugreports and if it's a bug you pay them back and if it's not a bug
but their fault, you charge them for a couple of hundred dollars.

This has always been in a kind of way as this in the standard software
agreements in Holland (Fenit voorwaarden). I did not check the last one so I
am not sure if it is still there. However this is seldom fulfilled, the
relation with the client is more important than those few bucks.

More important (as I meant as well with black and white message) . A
software developer is in my opinion not a standard customer.

Cor

 

[Cor Ligthert [MVP]]

Carlos,

I agree with you that hotfixes are not a solution and I share your
frustration. The fact that the first VS.NET 2003 Service pack will be
released in 2006 says it all...

I don't think that we should compare the Version 2003 with Version 2005.

Version 2003 was in my opinion in fact not much more than a servicepack for
Version 2002.

Version 2003 does in fact not have much essential bugs which could not be
solved by a better patch politic.

It is not for nothing that the internal name for 2003 is 7.1 while version
2005 is 8.0

Just my opinion,

Cor

 

[Carlos J. Quintero [VB MVP]]

Version 2003 was in my opinion in fact not much more than a servicepack
for Version 2002.

Then why did Microsoft release a SP1 for VS.NET 2002 much after releasing
VS.NET 2003? ;-)

--

Best regards,

Carlos J. Quintero

MZ-Tools: Productivity add-ins for Visual Studio 2005, Visual Studio .NET,
VB6, VB5 and VBA
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[Cor Ligthert [MVP]]

Carlos,

Then why did Microsoft release a SP1 for VS.NET 2002 much after releasing
VS.NET 2003? ;-)

Do you know the answer?

)

It is really a mystery for me, as you know that AFAIK the update offer was
only not done to VB2002 standard edition users. (Or maybe it is for those
who did not see that update offer).

Cor

 

[Carlos J. Quintero [VB MVP]]

Do you know the answer?

)

It is really a mystery for me, as you know that AFAIK the update offer was
only not done to VB2002 standard edition users. (Or maybe it is for those
who did not see that update offer).

A crazy update policy for VS.NET 2002/2003, I guess, but I don´t know the
reasons. About VS 2005 SP1 in the first half of 2006, 1) It would be the
normal thing and 2) Maybe even MS feels that the RTM was released a bit
ahead of time.

--

Best regards,

Carlos J. Quintero

MZ-Tools: Productivity add-ins for Visual Studio 2005, Visual Studio .NET,
VB6, VB5 and VBA
You can code, design and document much faster in VB.NET, C#, C++ or VJ#
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[Norman Diamond]

I have followed the procedure Call by phone, Point them to the KB article
and Request the fix several times without being charged and in a couple of
hours I was sent the download URL for the fix by e-mail.

Microsoft would not even let me state the KB article numbers unless I paid
first.

Other participants in this thread have indicated that in some other
countries Microsoft operates the same way as the country where you live, and
in some other countries Microsoft operates the same way as the country where
I live.

Aside from that, if a patch only fixes the Microsoft bug that the KB article
says it might fix, but still leaves other Microsoft bugs unchanged as
expected (or maybe even changed), then even the English-language versions of
the KB articles exclude these situations from getting refunds of the fees.

 

[Frans Bouma [C# MVP]]

Carlos,
I don't think that we should compare the Version 2003 with Version
2005.

Version 2003 was in my opinion in fact not much more than a
servicepack for Version 2002.

Version 2003 does in fact not have much essential bugs which could
not be solved by a better patch politic.

1) dll locking by ide during compilation causing compilation to
terminate. KB article 887818. Created october 2004
2) usercontrols removed from forms at random. KB article 842706.
Created June 2004.

And there are some other major issues which a lot of us have run into
almost daily. The two mentioned above are more than a year old. Because
they're so major, it's very strange they're still not released to the
public. MS says: 'not a lot ask for these patches so apparently not a
lot want them', but I think a lot of de vs.net users out there simply
don't know you can ask for a patch and that these patches exist.

A lot of time and misery would have been solved if MS would have
released a roll up of hotfixes every 3 months.

FB

--

 

[Frans Bouma [C# MVP]]

I have followed the procedure Call by phone, Point them to the KB
article and Request the fix several times without being charged and
in a couple of hours I was sent the download URL for the fix by
e-mail.

You make one mistake: you already know the KB article. Most of the
time though, the KB article number isn't known and a user runs into a
problem. What to do? If its his fault, he will pay up, so better keep
low and accept it till a service pack is released...

Also remember that not all known bugs are publicly listed with KB
articles: often a KB article is made internally but not publicly
published until the service pack the patch is in is released.

FB

--

 

[Cor Ligthert [MVP]]

Frans,

You did not quote my message completely, do I have to understand that you
don't agree with this text in my message.

Version 2003 does in fact not have much essential bugs which could not be
solved by a better patch politic.

I assume therefore that you agree completely with what Gregory wrote about
this subject and that the current procedures fulfil your needs.

Cor

 

[Carlos J. Quintero [VB MVP]]

You make one mistake: you already know the KB article. Most of the
time though, the KB article number isn't known and a user runs into a
problem. What to do? If its his fault, he will pay up, so better keep
low and accept it till a service pack is released...

Also remember that not all known bugs are publicly listed with KB
articles: often a KB article is made internally but not publicly
published until the service pack the patch is in is released.

As a user I always do some investigation before calling MS support or
someone else. I search in Google, MSDN KB, etc. As MVPs we can even search
in the KB for partners with more articles that the public KB, although
certainly it would be better to have access to the internal MS database with
all issues.

Most (or all) of the times I have found a KB article with the hotfix. And as
MVP we can also write KB articles (community solutions) to expose/document
bugs (without the hotfix), I have written more than 40 with bugs in the
extensibility model of VS.NET and some workarounds in the last couple of
years and they have helped to a lot of developers. At the very least, the
user will know that the problem is not his code...

--

Best regards,

Carlos J. Quintero

MZ-Tools: Productivity add-ins for Visual Studio 2005, Visual Studio .NET,
VB6, VB5 and VBA
You can code, design and document much faster in VB.NET, C#, C++ or VJ#
Free resources for add-in developers:
http://www.mztools.com

 

[Carlos J. Quintero [VB MVP]]

A lot of time and misery would have been solved if MS would have
released a roll up of hotfixes every 3 months.

I agree 100% on this.

--

Best regards,

Carlos J. Quintero

MZ-Tools: Productivity add-ins for Visual Studio 2005, Visual Studio .NET,
VB6, VB5 and VBA
You can code, design and document much faster in VB.NET, C#, C++ or VJ#
Free resources for add-in developers:
http://www.mztools.com

 

[Frans Bouma [C# MVP]]

Frans,

You did not quote my message completely, do I have to understand that
you don't agree with this text in my message.


I assume therefore that you agree completely with what Gregory wrote
about this subject and that the current procedures fulfil your needs.

I read in your statement that you find that vs.net doesn't have that
much bugs which would qualify a public release of a patch.

FB

Cor



your >> > frustration. The fact that the first VS.NET 2003 Service
pack will >> > be released in 2006 says it all...

--

 

[Cor Ligthert [MVP]]

"Frans Bouma schreef in bericht

I read in your statement that you find that vs.net doesn't have that
much bugs which would qualify a public release of a patch.

Than I wrote it wrong or you have read it wrong.

I try to tell that in my opinion a better patch policy can prevent that
there would be needed a complete service soon with only a small amount of
patches.

However you are free to disagree that with me of course.

Cor