Does MS even care?

[Guest]

I always wonder if there's any MS officials reading these posts.
I've read blogs, articles and forum posts all over the internet complaining
about a lot of things in Vista, but I have yet to see an answer or comment
from MS themselves.

Either it's a MS Hater that picks it up and starts trashing MS, just for the
hell of it, or it's a die-hard fan that's start ranting on how great
everything is, usually avoiding the issue that was raised.

I'm neither an MS Hater nor a die-hard fan, but in general I think that MS
has always made some software.
But I think they got it seriously wrong with Vista.

1.
What's with the Basic Theme?
It's has to be the ugliest choice of color I have ever seen. The layout is
ok, but the colors look like they were chosen randomly by a blind man. I
mean, babyblue windows and a black taskbar? Why not keep it all black/grey or
stick with the blue.
WMP11 look so great in XP, but it looks like crap in Vista Basic.

My pc doesn't have the power to run aero and I don't feel like forking over
~$1000 just to have transparent windows, but does that mean I don't deserve
something nice to look at?

2.
Why on earth did you disable the gameport?
I have a yoke and pedals which cost me ~$500 and will equally cost me ~$500
to replace.
Who decided that I'm not allowed to use my yoke and pedals anymore?
I've claims that it uses too many resources! That's got to be the lousiest
argument ever. PC are getting ever more powerful, and the gameport has always
worked just fine. So what if I miss a few FPS because my gameport is not as
fast as usb? Leave that choice to me?
I'm probably not going to switch untill the gameport is re-activated.

3.
DRM. I can understand that the industri want's to protect itself, but making
an OS that cut's the output to you TV just because your TV is more than a
year old, is just plain stupid.
Who made MS responsible for people pirating movies and music?
I'm not saying that it's ok to make illegal copies. Of course it's not, but
I fail to see how it's MS job to enforce it. The only thing you get out of
all this, is annoying genuine user, because they can't even play their
legally purchased cd/dvd's while some pirate doesn't give a hoot. They will
make their copies on Xp or even Linux and since the protection has been
removed, Vista will play them just fine.
Who looses? The people who actually paid for their stuff.

4.
WGA. The above statement fits fairly well on this too.
Againg...I don't blaim MS for trying to protect their software, but let's
face it...There will allways be pirated versions out there.
How does it feel to spend endless hours and $ to make a version of WGA just
to see it cracked the very next day? Then you tirelesly work on a new
version, just to have that cracked aswell.
And the WGA ends up being so critical it actually hurts the legal users.
Look what happened to the StarForce copy protection.

Face it...You can't beat the piracy thing.
Why not use the money to put more effort into the OS itself.
Perhaps...dare I say it...a decent UI ;-)


On a final note...I want MS to comment on these things. Perhaps if I knew
the reason for these design decisions, I would change my mind.
After all, Vista has been 5 years underway, and frankly, it has nothing to
show for it. Unless of course you got thousands of $ to spend on new hardware.

 

[Guest]

:

My pc doesn't have the power to run aero and I don't feel like forking over
~$1000 just to have transparent windows, but does that mean I don't deserve
something nice to look at?

Buy a Geforce 6200 with 128MB on chip, for $36 only and you'll get the full
GPU-rendered desktop with Aero.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814121542

 

[kirk jim]

The answer to your questions is simple: MS is arrogant.

I am MS pro, but Vista hits rock bottom when it comes to quality.

 

[Guest]

Thanks. That certainly does change things a bit.
Although that card doesn't look like to it's all that powerful gaming wise,
you have certainly proved that it is possible to find a resonable card for
AGP.
All other cards that I have been able to find, were PCI express, meaning
that I had to buy a new mobo, again meaning a whole new comp.

A card like that, might support me long enough for decent DX10 hardware to
become available (at a reasonable cost).
Then I'll have to buy a complete new system. But that's the price of
progress, which I'm fine with.

My main issue was, that I needed to upgrade perfectly good hardware just to
run the OS. The OS itself shouldn't be the resourcehog. Leave that to the
games.

Anyway, thanks again. <%Thumbs Up%>

 

[Guest]

I tend to agree. It appears that much more time and effort was put into XP.
XP is by far the best OS I have ever used.

But, to be fair, I have no personal experience with Vista, other than the 30
day trial thing in VPC2007 (which for obvious reason can't run aero)
The rest of my sparse knowledge of vista comes from blogs and communities.
If they fix the gameport issue I'm willing to give it a go, now that BillD
was so kind as to help me with the graphics issue.

my issues #3 and #4 about the copyprotections are not really issues for me.
Except the "no output to my tv" thing.
I just think it's really stupid to implements such limitations, since
there's a free alternative that doesn't have this.

 

[Guest]

Once they run their stats package they will know what the aggregate think.
Do they care about you. They don't know you so probably not.

 

[Mike Brannigan]

I always wonder if there's any MS officials reading these posts.
I've read blogs, articles and forum posts all over the internet
complaining
about a lot of things in Vista, but I have yet to see an answer or comment
from MS themselves.

Either it's a MS Hater that picks it up and starts trashing MS, just for
the
hell of it, or it's a die-hard fan that's start ranting on how great
everything is, usually avoiding the issue that was raised.

I'm neither an MS Hater nor a die-hard fan, but in general I think that MS
has always made some software.
But I think they got it seriously wrong with Vista.

1.
What's with the Basic Theme?
It's has to be the ugliest choice of color I have ever seen. The layout is
ok, but the colors look like they were chosen randomly by a blind man. I
mean, babyblue windows and a black taskbar? Why not keep it all black/grey
or
stick with the blue.
WMP11 look so great in XP, but it looks like crap in Vista Basic.

The themes were designed as the result of a huge amount of usability testing
and feedback during he development cycle. There are a compromise of
readability and aesthetics. (However aesthetics are always going to be
subjective).

My pc doesn't have the power to run aero and I don't feel like forking
over
~$1000 just to have transparent windows, but does that mean I don't
deserve
something nice to look at?

As another poster has pointed out a sub $40 graphics card will deliver
adequate performance for aero glass to be enabled.

2.
Why on earth did you disable the gameport?
I have a yoke and pedals which cost me ~$500 and will equally cost me
~$500
to replace.
Who decided that I'm not allowed to use my yoke and pedals anymore?
I've claims that it uses too many resources! That's got to be the lousiest
argument ever. PC are getting ever more powerful, and the gameport has
always
worked just fine. So what if I miss a few FPS because my gameport is not
as
fast as usb? Leave that choice to me?
I'm probably not going to switch untill the gameport is re-activated.

As you are aware Gameport support has been removed in favor of USB for
performance reasons etc.
Unfortunately as hardware technology move on so do user expectations of
performance, eventually you have to make call about providing support for
older technologies that would give a poor impression on your new more modern
OS.
If you need to provide USB ports for your PC again a few dollars for a USB
card will do this. (I do however understand your investment in Gameport
devices will not be carried forward).

3.
DRM. I can understand that the industri want's to protect itself, but
making
an OS that cut's the output to you TV just because your TV is more than a
year old, is just plain stupid.
Who made MS responsible for people pirating movies and music?
I'm not saying that it's ok to make illegal copies. Of course it's not,
but
I fail to see how it's MS job to enforce it. The only thing you get out of
all this, is annoying genuine user, because they can't even play their
legally purchased cd/dvd's while some pirate doesn't give a hoot. They
will
make their copies on Xp or even Linux and since the protection has been
removed, Vista will play them just fine.
Who looses? The people who actually paid for their stuff.

Microsoft is not trying to be "responsible for people pirating movies and
music" or even enforce this - what was done was to provide technologies that
a content provider can choose to use if they want to protect their content.
Microsoft were encouraged to develop and provide this technology but the use
of it is in the hands of the content providers.
The inability to play protected content on a PC is again an issue forced on
you by the content providers and not Microsoft.
Unfortunately this argument is kind of like blaming the car manufactures for
road deaths due to careless driving because they build cars and not the
persons who decided to recklessly use those cars.

4.
WGA. The above statement fits fairly well on this too.
Againg...I don't blaim MS for trying to protect their software, but let's
face it...There will allways be pirated versions out there.
How does it feel to spend endless hours and $ to make a version of WGA
just
to see it cracked the very next day? Then you tirelesly work on a new
version, just to have that cracked aswell.
And the WGA ends up being so critical it actually hurts the legal users.
Look what happened to the StarForce copy protection.

You need to distinguish between casual piracy that WGA helps prevent and
commercial piracy and the hard core pirates.
WGA help prevent users thinking that they can just install a copy of Windows
on a couple of PCs in their homes.
The efforts to counter commercial piracy etc are different.
WGA also allows Microsoft to make available to legitimate end users added
value add ones etc, again an encouragement to go legit.

Face it...You can't beat the piracy thing.
Why not use the money to put more effort into the OS itself.
Perhaps...dare I say it...a decent UI ;-)

Piracy costs significant amounts of money in lost revenues. While Microsoft
is a hugely profitable company the research and development costs for
Windows and the rest of the products is huge and lost revenue impacts this.
so the costs of developing anti piracy measures are worth it when compared
to lost revues.

On a final note...I want MS to comment on these things. Perhaps if I knew
the reason for these design decisions, I would change my mind.

This is the wrong place to ask this then as these are peer to peer support
newsgroups.
If you want an official response to specific questions you will need to
contact Microsoft directly.

After all, Vista has been 5 years underway, and frankly, it has nothing to
show for it. Unless of course you got thousands of $ to spend on new
hardware.

The development time spent on Vista is more then 5 years elapsed, there are
millions of lines of code performing tasks that you may not see directly on
the screen but these are enhancing the OS in many ways. Obviously there are
changes to he UI that you would see if your hardware allowed it, there are
changes to search engines to allow you to work more efficiently as well as
new APIs for developers to leverage for new applications.
Vista is a great step forward from XP in many ways.

 

[Guest]

I hope you allready know this: I wasn't asking if MS cared about me as an
individual.

It's just that, MS must be aware of the response Vista is getting in various
communities. But I can't find a shred of information from MS addressing any
of these issues.

People all over the world are nagging about this and that. I just want to
know wether or not MS actually listens to people and make the proper changes.

I'm not saying they should change everything because one person isn't happy.
But some of these issues are raised again and again all over the internet.
To me, that means it's major issue that needs to be addressed. So is it?
Or is MS happy with Vista the way it is?

Take the gameport for instance. Didn't it occur to MS that people was
actually still using it? And would like to continue doing so?
No doubt, the next joystick I buy will be USB, but until then, I would like
to be able to use the one I have.
Which means, that I'm stuck with XP and eventually I'll miss out on the
games that are vista-only.

So hopefully MS pays attention, because I refuse to believe I'm the only one
sticking with XP because of this.

 

[Guest]

There are such things as Game Ports to USB adaptors.

http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=Game+Ports+to+USB+&btnG=Google+Search&meta=lr=lang_en

The only one I looked at cost around 7 guinas (or 7 pd 7 shillings if you
prefer).

 

[Guest]

Thank you for answering.

The themes were designed as the result of a huge amount of usability testing
and feedback during he development cycle. There are a compromise of
readability and aesthetics. (However aesthetics are always going to be
subjective).

Then why are there so many post all over the net complaining about how it
hurts their eyes and so on.
I'm not complaining about the layout and usefulness of the ui, but the poor
choice of color. The least MS could have done, was to include a couple of
different colorschemes, so people could choose for them selves. They did it
with XP...

As you are aware Gameport support has been removed in favor of USB for
performance reasons etc.
Unfortunately as hardware technology move on so do user expectations of
performance, eventually you have to make call about providing support for
older technologies that would give a poor impression on your new more modern
OS.
If you need to provide USB ports for your PC again a few dollars for a USB
card will do this. (I do however understand your investment in Gameport
devices will not be carried forward).

It's not a lack of USB ports. It's the fact that someone I don't even know,
suddenly decided that I didn't need my controllers anymore.
How hard can it be, to keep support for the gameport? Just leave the old XP
driver in there. They even disabled the device completely, so know one else
can make a driver for it.
And what about people using MIDI? They have the exact same problem.
I think it's just pure arrogance to make a compatability breaking decision
like that.
The switch from gameport to usb will come all by itself, as it's not even
possible to buy a joystick for the gameport anymore. They didn't need to
force it upon us.
This is **the** main issue I have with Vista at the moment, and it means a
lot to me, and probably many others, I'm sure.
The controllers I have were very expensive, so I really don't feel like
throwing them out, because some billionaire thinks so.

Microsoft is not trying to be "responsible for people pirating movies and
music" or even enforce this - what was done was to provide technologies that
a content provider can choose to use if they want to protect their content.
Microsoft were encouraged to develop and provide this technology but the use
of it is in the hands of the content providers.
The inability to play protected content on a PC is again an issue forced on
you by the content providers and not Microsoft.
Unfortunately this argument is kind of like blaming the car manufactures for
road deaths due to careless driving because they build cars and not the
persons who decided to recklessly use those cars.

I don't blame them for making the protection available, but if I can stick
my DVD in my regular DVD player and watch it, why shouldn't I be able to
stick in my PC, and see it on me TV, using the Media Center? Just because my
TV "only" has DVI input, which doesn't support the protection?
Fair enough, disabling the ability to record/copy it somehow, but disabling
output to the devices is just too intruding.
Granted, I have no experince of how intruding this actually is. I just read
an article and were shocked. It appears that MS tries to control our pc's too
much. Where's the freedom?
Again, it's only hurting the legal users of a product. Pirates will find a
way.

You need to distinguish between casual piracy that WGA helps prevent and
commercial piracy and the hard core pirates.
WGA help prevent users thinking that they can just install a copy of Windows
on a couple of PCs in their homes.
The efforts to counter commercial piracy etc are different.
WGA also allows Microsoft to make available to legitimate end users added
value add ones etc, again an encouragement to go legit.

Piracy costs significant amounts of money in lost revenues. While Microsoft
is a hugely profitable company the research and development costs for
Windows and the rest of the products is huge and lost revenue impacts this.
so the costs of developing anti piracy measures are worth it when compared
to lost revues.

But is the "casual piracy" a bigger problem than commercial piracy.
So what, if some family installs it on their desktop AND their laptop?
It's the guy's who do the cracking and sharing, aswell as those who download
and use it thats the real problem.
But, ironically, they are probably the ones who suffer the least.
The money is lost on commercial piracy, but is used to fight the little guy.
If that's not money out the window (no pun intended) then I don't know what
is.
Again...I would much rather have the money spent on making the os even
better, thereby making it even more appealing to buy.

This is the wrong place to ask this then as these are peer to peer support
newsgroups.
If you want an official response to specific questions you will need to
contact Microsoft directly.

Fair enough ;-)

The development time spent on Vista is more then 5 years elapsed, there are
millions of lines of code performing tasks that you may not see directly on
the screen but these are enhancing the OS in many ways. Obviously there are
changes to he UI that you would see if your hardware allowed it, there are
changes to search engines to allow you to work more efficiently as well as
new APIs for developers to leverage for new applications.
Vista is a great step forward from XP in many ways.

I don't doubt that there are many new features. And since I have only tried
the basic version on a VPC I can't really tell.
But based on articles, blogs and comments on the net, it seems that all
vista really is, is eyecandy. (when aero is enabled, that is)
Main problem, probably being, that most of the features are invisible and
are running in the background, like the searchindexer etc., while the visible
ones, just seems too intrusive, like UAC.

But, as I stated earlier, if they fix the gameport, I'll give it a try.
Until then...it's xp for me.

Thanks for taking the time to answer.

 

[Guest]

Not anyone good enough.
First of all, the don't support the number of axis and buttons I require.
Remember, its a flight yoke with pedals.

Secondly, I can't get anyone to say they work with vista.
Problem is, it has to be registered as a usb-controller to even be
considered by vista.
It's not enough to have an adaptor like usb-serial converter that just gives
you a virtual com-port.

I have no need for a virtual gameport if vista won't use a gameport.

If you know of one that works with CH Virtual Pilot Pro and pedals please
let me know.
I would make the switch immediatly...

There are such things as Game Ports to USB adaptors.

http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=Game+Ports+to+USB+&btnG=Google+Search&meta=lr=lang_en

The only one I looked at cost around 7 guinas (or 7 pd 7 shillings if you
prefer).

 

[Guest]

I completly agree!!!!

We all want Gameport back!!!

 

[Richard Urban]

I am only going to comment on number 4.

Why don't you take all the exterior doors off of your home because someday
you may be robbed anyway. Concentrate your efforts and money on making the
inside of your home more luxurious and livable (so the robbers will want
what you have inside even more).

After all, the person who wants what you have may be poor and unable to
purchase that which you have for himself. That doesn't mean that he should
not be allowed to take yours.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban MVP
Microsoft Windows Shell/User

 

[Guest]

Have you even read my post?
You're twisting my words.

I never said anything about accepting piracy or that they should be allowed
to pirate anything they like.

I'm saying that the focus is wrong.

The efforts being made so far, only hurts the legit users.
Pirates, on the other hand, just goes on.

WGA is fighting a battle it can't win.

Don't throw money away on anti-pirate stuff that clearly isn't working
I'm not saying I have the answer. I don't know what to do instead, but I do
know that the current way is a waste of money.

As if the lost revenue isn't enough, MS decides to throw even more money
down the toilet.

You may or may not agree with me on this. This is ok by me, but don't twist
my words, making me look like I think piracy is ok. IT IS NOT.

 

[MICHAEL]

Idiot.

I am only going to comment on number 4.

Why don't you take all the exterior doors off of your home because someday you may be robbed
anyway. Concentrate your efforts and money on making the inside of your home more luxurious
and livable (so the robbers will want what you have inside even more).

After all, the person who wants what you have may be poor and unable to purchase that which
you have for himself. That doesn't mean that he should not be allowed to take yours.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban MVP
Microsoft Windows Shell/User

 

[MICHAEL]

Have you even read my post?

You're twisting my words.

That is a commom tactic that the Microsoft sycophantic shills
try to do often- especially, Dick.

 

[Richard Urban]

People who think that a company has no right, or responsibility, to protect
their profits is the idiot.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban MVP
Microsoft Windows Shell/User

 

[Guest]

You really don't like reading post do you?

You just babble on without any clue as to what you're talking about!

Who the hell said anything about a company not having the right or
responsibility?
Do yourself a favour...READ THE POSTS. Then comment.

No one said anything about piracy being a good thing, but yet you persist.

Now, make a usefull comment for my thread or leave it alone.
I don't want to spent anymore time with this childish discussion.

 

[Alias]

People who think that a company has no right, or responsibility, to
protect their profits is the idiot.

Sell MS short. Their profits are going to go right down the drain due to
their intrusive "protection programs" which do nothing to stop piracy
and do everything to encourage people to look for alternatives.

Alias

 

[MICHAEL]

Dick,

Who stated in such absolute terms that Microsoft "has no right,
or responsibility, to protect their profits"?

In the OS and Office divisions of the company, Microsoft
has about an 80% profit margin. Overall, their profit margin
stands at about 35%. Both figures are extraordinary.
They are number 48 on Fortune's 500 in terms of revenue-
but, *number 7* in terms of profit. They make more money
than Wal-Mart, Procter & Gamble, Verizon, Wachovia, Wells Fargo,
Goldman Sachs, Berkshire Hathaway, IBM, JP Morgan, Pfizer,
Morgan Stanley, Coca-Cola, Home Depot, UPS, Dell, Intel, 3M,
Johnson & Johnson, Cisco, Dow Chemical-
just to name a few big companies.

I don't believe their profits are in jeopardy.

Keep doing the twist, idiot.


-Michael