[Am-info] query about MS "Innovations"

[Erick Andrews]

On Fri, 29 Mar 2002 10:11:52 -0500, Geoffrey wrote:

>John Poltorak wrote:
>> On Fri, Mar 29, 2002 at 09:43:11AM -0500, Sujal Shah wrote:
>> 
>>>On Fri, 2002-03-29 at 09:39, Geoffrey wrote:
>>>
>>>>Sujal Shah wrote:
>>>>
>>>[SNIP]
>>>
>>>>Not to mention the whole issue of a product failing (windows crash) and 
>>>>being a perfectly acceptable product attribute.  Point is, if your car 
>>>>stops in the middle of the road, you take it to the shop and they (in 
>>>>most cases) correct problem.  Sure, sometimes they'll not be able to 
>>>>find anything and send you on your way.  But if it happens again over 
>>>>the life of the vehicle, you're going to take it back and they will fix it.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>Oh, that reminds me.  Another MSFT innovation is getting someone else to
>>>burden the cost of supporting your product.  I can't believe that the
>>>OEMs are happy being front line support for essentially a whole lot of
>>>MSFT software (since not much non-MSFT software actually makes it onto
>>>new PCs anymore).
>>>
>> 
>> I think you have hit the nail on the head. This is Microsoft's greatest 
>> innovation, outsourcing testing of their software to unsuspecting third 
>> parties. It must cut down development costs to a small fraction of the 
>> true value.
>
>Actually these are two different issues, but both are valid.  M$ does 
>outsource their support of their products (at no cost to themselves that 
>I know of) to the OEMs.  This is why I don't buy t-shirts that advertise 
>for a particular company.  I'm not going to pay to be someone's free 
>advertisement.
>
>AND they also outsource a lot of their testing by giving REAL users beta 
>software.  Have you ever seen a version of windows that wasn't patched 
>very shortly after it went out?  Why?  Because some unsuspecting user 
>found a bug M$ did not.
>

Actually, I recall Microsoft often charges REAL users REAL money for
their betas.

Now that's some "innovation"...getting people to test your software and
getting away with charging them to do it.

-- 
Erick Andrews