Tag: Microsoft

CNN reports that Microsoft today released a patch to fix some security problems with Windows Media Player.

In my opinion, Windows Media Player is the biggest piece of crap software that I’ve had the misfortune to find on my PC in a long time. My wife and I bought a laptop a year ago primarily to use for light word processing tasks on the road. It’s got an AMD K6 233mhz processor and 32 mb of RAM. Not exactly high performance, but perfect running a text editor and doing some light web browsing. And, until I installed Windows Millennium, nice for listening to CDs with headphones while I’m working on an article.

Now, though, inserting a CD automatically starts up the Windows Media Player which just destroys any hope of actually using the computer — in fact WMP is such a resource hog that the laptop isn’t even able to play the CD except in fits and starts.

And it’s not just the laptop. WMP does run after a fashion on my 900mhz Athlon with 256 mb of memory, but again it seriously (unacceptably) degrades system performance.

One of these days I’ll get around to uninstalling it.

Wired quotes consultant John McCormick as saying that the newly announced 1.5 gigahertz Pentium 4 won’t have much impact on ordinary office workers. “People who use word processing applications and spread sheets won’t see much of a difference in performance,” McCormick told Wired.

Give me a break. Has McCormick used this bloatware recently? At work I’m running on a 500 MHZ Pentium III with 128 mb memory, and both WordPerfect and Microsoft Office consume resources like crazy. Not only will I need a 1.5 GHZ, but I also need a SCSI hard drive given the way these programs are constantly going to the C: drive (this even with no other programs open).

Some people I know like to use the latest 3-d games to test how fast a computer system really is. On the other hand I think MS Office 2000 is the real test of how much a system can handle (I’m surprised Nvidia and 3DFX never decided to market Office Accelerator Cards!)

Yikes. The Wall Street Journal reports that Microsoft will begin an experiment next month renting Microsoft Office at Internet cafes in New York City’s Times Square. According to the report they’re going to charge $2 per session for using Microsoft Office.

That ridiculously high fee looks even worse when you consider that’s on top of the hourly fees at the Internet cafe,

The Microsoft software rental program will debut in easyEverythingÂ’ s New York facility and later be available in its existing cafes in Europe. The charge for using the software comes on top of easyEverythingÂ’s time-based usage fees, which currently range from 17 pence (27 cents) an hour in the middle of the night to 3 British pounds ($4.31) an hour during peak periods. Currently, easyEverything customers can use MicrosoftÂ’s scaled-down Works suite of software without paying an extra fee.

I don’t think consumers will stand for this. One of the places i occasionally use while traveling is Kinko’s which usually has pretty nice Windows boxes complete with the latest software such as Photoshop, Office, etc., at pretty decent prices (they are often more expensive than the cyber cafes, to be sure). If I have to pay an additional per-session fee for using an Office application or any other application, the price would be far too high and I’d either avoid using such places or ask for the machine with Star Office installed, thank you very much.

Contrary to the U.S. courts I don’t think Microsoft has anything close to a software monopoly and if it tries to charge monopoly-like prices, Microsoft will quickly find out that it needs Office users far more than Officer users need it.

The Register (UK) has a brief look at Windows ME that highlights some of the inane bugs in ME as well as the typical MS response — customers aren’t supposed to try that. Consider what happens if you are silly enough to think that Microsoft’s Personal Web Server will install properly on Windows ME:

Microsoft’s Personal Web Server (PWS) is one of the applications that falls foul of Windows Me. PWS tries to overwrite some of the core system files and when it doesn’t instead of aborting the installation, it creates several nasty registry errors.

Microsoft responds with the obvious, once again, stating that this technology is more appropriate for business and/or corporate users, and since Windows Me was designed solely for the home user, PWS is not supported by Windows Me. Which leads to it not being able to work in Windows Me.

But it screwing your registry does seem a bit hard, even so. Particularly if you didn’t have a backup. You did have a backup, didn’t you?

Morons. Okay, if it’s not supposed to be used by home users, why the hell did they call it the Personal Web Server? Maybe what they really should say is they never meant Windows to be used in the home — people with home PCs should install Linux or buy Macs!

ZDNet has a story about Microsoft trying to bribe a few dozen Palm enthusiasts. Basically MS identified the most outspoken and influential handheld enthusiasts, invited them to Redmond, and then gave them $1,400 in free PocketPC PDAs. Each participant received a Compaq iPaq and a HP 540.

Apparently Microsoft hopes its marketing department can accomplish what its software division can’t — give large numbers of people a reason to own the PocketPC.

Of course it backfired. As one participant told ZDNet, “It was a cheap tactic to bring Palm users into the fold with freebies. And I think they did that because the device doesn’t stand well on its own.”

And apparently the Palm enthusiast learned why the PocketPC still has such problems, experiencing numerous difficulties in doing basic things like synchronizing the PocketPC with a desktop PC. As one person put it, “Here we were, a room full of handheld experts, and we had trouble figuring even the basic stuff out. This is exemplary of why the platform doesn’t work and Microsoft doesn’t get it.”

One of the people who replied to the ZDNet story put Microsoft’s problem succinctly. You can only bribe somebody with something of value, and a PocketPC machine ain’t it.

Why do big corporations think these sorts of things are good ideas? First Apple gets slammed for allegedly forcing people to sign non disclosure agreements to get their defective Cube’s replaced, and now Microsoft guarantees that even if they do eventually produce a decent version of PocketPC consumers will have to wonder if it gets good reviews because it’s really good or because somebody’s been bribed.

(If I were the Palm enthusiasts, most of whom are journalists or authors, I’d return the gifts ASAP. Never take a gift from someone you’re covering if you still want to be considered objective — or donate them to a friendly web site operator like myself.)