MS used to have uservoice pages. They ignored issues, no matter how highly-voted they were. I once asked someone at MS about this, and they said they take their cues from other sources, like what industry partners ask them to fix at conferences.
What a waste of time to have uservoice pages, induce people to post/vote on them, and then just ignore them. I guess it's for the best that they nuked them. They were replaced with pages that said "tweet us". Maybe they have something more robust now, especially since twitter is politically charged/divisive.
The point isn't to resolve user problems, it's to reduce the number of people taking up the time of support agents. Letting people vent in a pseudo-official channel accomplishes that. Whenever something gets resolved that was being fixed anyway, because the "industry partners", enterprise and high level customers wanted it, they can mark an issue as resolved, and generate the appearance of responsive service.
It's like standing up complex automated phone menus, you're going to frustrate a certain number of callers into giving up, and reduce the overall number of customers you have to interact with.
We need a scale reform for modern businesses - platforms and companies like Microsoft are logistically incapable of providing good service to their customers, or moderating hundreds of millions or even billions of users, effectively separating these companies from all the harm they cause.
If you can't responsibly operate a business past a certain scale, you shouldn't be allowed to continue growth. I don't know what that looks like, legally speaking, but it's necessary, for what should be reasons obvious to everyone.
> If you can't responsibly operate a business past a certain scale, you shouldn't be allowed to continue growth. I don't know what that looks like, legally speaking
A legal solution is not the correct solution to that problem. The classic answer to this question in Western societies is that the market will produce a better alternative.
For what it's worth, I'm typing this on my Debian desktop. In my opinion, a far better solution.
> We need a scale reform for modern businesses - platforms and companies like Microsoft are logistically incapable of providing good service to their customers, or moderating hundreds of millions or even billions of users, effectively separating these companies from all the harm they cause.
And here is where "you have to spend X number of days a year doing CS" should be a requirement for every engineer, dev, product manger, and executive.
I do not think you understand the level of abject stupidity that customers are capable of. I do not think you understand how likely customers are to do dumb things and blame the company.
Companies who provide support charge more for their products to pay for it. How much? Well how many people break things and then ask for refunds. The company pays for those people by marking up all the other products.
IN any organization: first friend outside your team should be in accounting. The second should be in customer service. These are the most valuable resources you will have regarding the tempo of what is going on inside your organization. They are the front line and the oracles of "truth" (the books dont lie, unless your Enron' and then you have bigger problems).
> The point isn't to resolve user problems, it's to reduce the number of people taking up the time of support agents. Letting people vent in a pseudo-official channel accomplishes that. Whenever something gets resolved that was being fixed anyway, because the "industry partners", enterprise and high level customers wanted it, they can mark an issue as resolved, and generate the appearance of responsive service.
Yep. It's like Whitehouse "petitions". Time-wasting tarpits for the unaware.
> It's like standing up complex automated phone menus, you're going to frustrate a certain number of callers into giving up, and reduce the overall number of customers you have to interact with.
The point of pointless troubleshooting procedures, long forms, long wait times, denials, and inconvenience is to monetize misery and create a maximally-negative conversion funnel. Ask any UnitedHealth or airline CEO.
The market has solutions to this, but they are mostly for businesses. E.g. You can purchase "support" either from Microsoft, or other third parties that will then deal with MS for you if they can't fix it themselves. And whatever software you buy also has it's own support terms too. (I've had good experiences with paid AWS support under both models.)
On the flip side: if you're an individual, you're at a poker table with a $50 chip—you don't have leverage—you either just take the bet or don't. So you're basically forced to research the laptop/hardware/software you intend to run to verify it's a happy path, or it at least has vendors (or a local PC store) that will help you if something breaks, and hope for the best.
So I guess the question is, would people be willing to pay for good support? Would people even pay for an OS anymore?
I wonder if they will purposely train/instruct chatbot help agents to be a bit less helpful, to mimic the friction and frustration that phone trees and such create.
Or perhaps they'll train them to be cheerfully helpful, but to just dump all the feedback in a virtual circular file. If so, would the chatbot admit this is what happens if the user asked them?
Imagine being so braindead that instead of listening to users, you arbitrary select down to people who attend a conference, happen to see you, happen to realize you work for Microsoft, happen to care, happen to remember whatever obscure feature they or some coworker needed, and happen to explain it to you in a such a memorable way that you don't forget it, and on top of all that imagine you're so stupid that you think this is a Good Way to Do Things and you manage to rise up the ranks at Microsoft sufficiently high enough that you can influence product direction, or that you ear of those who can.
It actually sounded like they weren't even paying attention to feedback from average users who happened to recognize them at a conf. Instead it sounded like they were focused on feedback from people who work at other bigco's.
As can be seen, if they can't manage something like this that applies equally to Windows 10, about all you can do is work around it or whine about it.
I've recently found information about Windows Vista that enabled more reliable printing in the very latest Windows 11 there is.
It always seems like such sad behavior when people make an effort to remove worthwhile material when there is so much useless waste that is not even addressed.
Hi, I’m an Independent Advisor. It sounds like you expected Microsoft community support to be a valuable resource for answers to your technical problems. I can understand how frustrating that would be. At this point, the most reliable solution is to perform a clean reinstall of Windows.
In the department of literal jokes department: In high school, I discovered that I could flip the power switch of an PS/2 model 25 off and on fast enough such that the capacitors in the linear supply had enough charge to keep the system from rebooting.
Honestly I dont feel it's a loss. Community Support was always very low quality. Lots of terrible low grade problem reports with 59 "me too!"s and a poor agent typing a scripted response that was only tangentially related to the issue. Frankly, a bot trained on reddit and SO would comfortably replace the majority of answers. This is not the Raymond Chen level of problem solving we are talking about.
Don't forget the Microsoft certified diamond elite premier plus MVP of 2002 saving everyones corrupt Exchange installations because microsoft can't be bothered to offer real support
Readit News
What a waste of time to have uservoice pages, induce people to post/vote on them, and then just ignore them. I guess it's for the best that they nuked them. They were replaced with pages that said "tweet us". Maybe they have something more robust now, especially since twitter is politically charged/divisive.
It's like standing up complex automated phone menus, you're going to frustrate a certain number of callers into giving up, and reduce the overall number of customers you have to interact with.
We need a scale reform for modern businesses - platforms and companies like Microsoft are logistically incapable of providing good service to their customers, or moderating hundreds of millions or even billions of users, effectively separating these companies from all the harm they cause.
If you can't responsibly operate a business past a certain scale, you shouldn't be allowed to continue growth. I don't know what that looks like, legally speaking, but it's necessary, for what should be reasons obvious to everyone.
For what it's worth, I'm typing this on my Debian desktop. In my opinion, a far better solution.
And here is where "you have to spend X number of days a year doing CS" should be a requirement for every engineer, dev, product manger, and executive.
I do not think you understand the level of abject stupidity that customers are capable of. I do not think you understand how likely customers are to do dumb things and blame the company.
Companies who provide support charge more for their products to pay for it. How much? Well how many people break things and then ask for refunds. The company pays for those people by marking up all the other products.
IN any organization: first friend outside your team should be in accounting. The second should be in customer service. These are the most valuable resources you will have regarding the tempo of what is going on inside your organization. They are the front line and the oracles of "truth" (the books dont lie, unless your Enron' and then you have bigger problems).
Yep. It's like Whitehouse "petitions". Time-wasting tarpits for the unaware.
> It's like standing up complex automated phone menus, you're going to frustrate a certain number of callers into giving up, and reduce the overall number of customers you have to interact with.
The point of pointless troubleshooting procedures, long forms, long wait times, denials, and inconvenience is to monetize misery and create a maximally-negative conversion funnel. Ask any UnitedHealth or airline CEO.
On the flip side: if you're an individual, you're at a poker table with a $50 chip—you don't have leverage—you either just take the bet or don't. So you're basically forced to research the laptop/hardware/software you intend to run to verify it's a happy path, or it at least has vendors (or a local PC store) that will help you if something breaks, and hope for the best.
So I guess the question is, would people be willing to pay for good support? Would people even pay for an OS anymore?
Or perhaps they'll train them to be cheerfully helpful, but to just dump all the feedback in a virtual circular file. If so, would the chatbot admit this is what happens if the user asked them?
It's honestly pretty awe inspiring.
Dead Comment
>can-i-open-16-bit-application-in-windows-8?forum=windows-all&referrer=answers
I had good luck using the 32-bit version of W8 & W10. Had to manually enable NTVDM manually beforehand.
For 64-bit Widows IIRC it would open in DOSbox, but it was actually a DOS aplication.
Now there's this:
https://github.com/leecher1337/ntvdmx64
https://github.com/otya128/winevdm/
windows 8 has reach end of life and service, they don't have all obligation to keep support channel for this operating system
I've recently found information about Windows Vista that enabled more reliable printing in the very latest Windows 11 there is.
It always seems like such sad behavior when people make an effort to remove worthwhile material when there is so much useless waste that is not even addressed.
Also the DOS DOS of COPY CON CLOCK$.