What Ms Does Right.

[darasen 0]

It is a truism that it is far far easier to criticize than to compliment. I guess it is just part of human nature. I myself am rather critical of Microsoft in many ways especially their ubiquitous Os, Windows. Now I am going to challenge us though and ask a tough question, what does Microsoft do right?

I would have to start with their website. Support.microsoft.com is a remarkable source for any issue you might be having with windows or an MS product. Also MSDN.microsoft.com and their technet are a vast source of knowledge for just about anything you may need. There are articles for everyone from PC beginners to advanced programmers available. It is not always easy to find what you are looking for but just plunging into the knowledge base at random one is bound to learn something new.

The free stuff they offer: Ms actually does have a decent amount of free products available to the public. the VB .net express as well as the C# and C++ offerings for free are good tools for learning and making lightweight applications. With the free SQL server express you can make client server database applications as well. Good stuff for no cost.

Lastly I will mention MS Access. I know that Access has many detractors but as I have stated before I can make a decent living from developing with this one application. Access is able to run the gamut of being a single user database to splitting the data and running it as a client server application. When the Access database functionality reaches it's limits Access still makes a great front end for data stored on larger database management systems. Access functions well as a rapid application development tool and all the code from an Access program can be compiled to an executable to where the user never even sees the normal access window.

There may be other things that Microsoft does well. Thus, now it is time for the communities input. What do you think?

[toby 0]

Horrible way of getting popular, horrible things along the way (read history and critisim on 'pedia). It's business, they do do it well.

[Quatrux 4]

making an OS full of holes, making viruses for it and creating expensive anti virus software is also a big business :rolleyes:making SPAM and creating/paying for SPAM proof systems and etc. is also a business in my opinion, even though a lot of that now are just made by freelancers, even though I read a topic that there is something similar like "SPAM mafia" people who have some hackers, which later ratchet-wheel the company, if it doesn't pay, those "hackers" make their servers send SPAM and their servers being BANNED by different other companies, heh :PSo I guess there's nothing good created by people who are into business, Microsoft makes software which is hard to understand in some places/occasions, that you would need to hire an engineer or some other people to fix it or to make it work, sometimes even that support fro Microsoft site seems to be to difficult or to big to understand, I usually close their support links found on google by searching for something..

[darasen 0]

Oddly this thread seems to have elicited Ms bashing resutls and the How to Improve Windows thread has elicited What MS does right responses.

So I guess there's nothing good created by people who are into business

I am sorry I do not understand this statement. Are you trying to say that there is no good software made that isn't open source? I am sure that can;t be it.

[Quatrux 4]

No, that's not what I meant Darasen.. :rolleyes:What I meant wasn't really direct, have you ever seen a cartoon Dilbert? If you did, maybe you could get the point, it's just was some form of a joke though.

[xboxrulz1405241485 0]

One thing Microsoft did that was right was the fact that Windows does have the tools to have fine-grained security, but unfortunately most users don't understand or will use them at all. Thus, nulling the point of including these tools which are not to be found on UNIX systems.However, for me, the biggest thing Microsoft did right this time around is the XBOX 360. Hell, they're outselling the PS3 like hotcakes. Unfortunately for them, the Wii is a better offer to most people.I own both the Wii and XBOX 360, so it doesn't make a difference for me.xboxrulz

[skedad 0]

If it weren't for Microsoft being a huge enterprise, we wouldn't have the competition out there that we do.So it is good to criticize if not for the little companies out there that are pumping out the products that Microsoft does.

[docduke 0]

I just ran into something Microsoft has improved on. They have previously made a practice of creating new versions of Word, Excel, etc. which used incompatible versions of their data files (word documents, spreadsheets, etc.). This is in marked contrast with Word Perfect, for example, which had the same file formats for more than a decade.

Recently, I was emailed a .docx and a .xlsx document, both created by Office 2007 (2008?). Since I have only Office 2003, I couldn't read them. I went looking for a converter. It turned out that Microsoft has such a converter at Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats.

However, Ms seemed to have real problems with it. It published Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack Service Pack 1 (SP1) less than one month later, and the "Service Pack" is about the same size as the original Converter! I put them both into my computer, and the result did the conversions I wanted.

Why the big "Service Pack"? The "conversion" of my files took a long time getting started. (Each was only 2 or 3 pages in length, with nothing fancy inside.) My guess is that it was taking time to make sure I had a legal copy of Ms Office. I don't know what it would have done if I was doing the conversion to read the files in Open Office, but I think there's a good chance the conversion would "fail" if a legal copy of an earlier Ms Office wasn't around.

[xboxrulz1405241485 0]

I think a better thing for Microsoft was to just adopt ODF. There's no reason for Microsoft to create their own format. It's redundant.xboxrulz

[wutske 0]

I must admit that I find it more easy to complain about Microsoft too, rather than highlighting the good things they do. For starters, they do give away a lot of free stuff, especialy at students (atm I have about 3 XP Pro licenses, 2 Vista business licenses, full versions of visual studio, their whole web-development kits, ... ow ... and because our school changed names we got new accounts meaning I have everything double ).One thing that most people do mention but don't consider as such a big plus is the fact that windows is rather user friendly, compared to linux that is a big advantage. Most people also nag about their hardware not working (anymore) in windows, but windows still has more hardware compatibilty compared to linux (altough that is mostly due to the manufactureres creating drivers for windows and not for linux/MacOs).Of course, their security is still crap, I've had a rootkit a couple of days ago and I still can't believe that files can be totaly invisible and registry keys can be un-deleteable , but hey ... linux security is crap too, but nobody bothers finding security holes in it

[xboxrulz1405241485 0]

I have:Windows 2000Windows XP HomeWindows XP ProfessionalWindows XP Professional X64Windows Vista BusinessWindows Vista Business X64Windows Server 2003Windows Server 2008Windows Server 2008 X64All these licenses free and courtesy of MSDNAA lol! I could get Visual Studio but found no use atm. I'm happy with Eclipse.A few weeks ago I was playing with Windows ME, talk about horrors, it's worse than a haunted mansion!xboxrulz

[wutske 0]

I have:Windows 2000
Windows XP Home
Windows XP Professional
Windows XP Professional X64
Windows Vista Business
Windows Vista Business X64
Windows Server 2003
Windows Server 2008
Windows Server 2008 X64

All these licenses free and courtesy of MSDNAA lol! I could get Visual Studio but found no use atm. I'm happy with Eclipse.

A few weeks ago I was playing with Windows ME, talk about horrors, it's worse than a haunted mansion!

xboxrulz

Indeed, ME is one of the biggest MS screw ups , I never undestood why they even bothered releasing it

[xboxrulz1405241485 0]

As such, I would like to quote XKCD:

Source: http://xkcd.com/323/

 

xboxrulz

[docduke 0]

At the time that Windows ME was introduced, Windows NT was struggling for acceptance. It was quite different from Windows 95 and 98, and had many detractors. The two architectures: Win 9x and NT, are very different, and Microsoft wanted to maintain cash flow from its customer base, so it needed a new version. Windows 2000 (the successor to Windows NT) was not ready, so they added more "features" to Windows 98, and marketed it as Windows ME.I got a copy of Windows ME with a laptop I bought. After I realized its limitations, I bought a retail copy of Windows 2000, and tried to install it on the laptop. After about half an hour of spinning its wheels, the Windows 2000 installer reported (I paraphrase): "Ready to perform installation. By the way, I don't have a driver for this hard drive, so after I complete the installation, the computer will probably not run at all. Press "y" to proceed." I aborted the installation, installed BootMagic (from PowerQuest, which no longer exists), and set the computer up for dual-boot between Windows ME and SuSE Linux. Needless to say, it spent over 95% of its time in Linux. In fact, it ran an Apache server hosting Wikipedia and phpBB services for 3 or 4 years until the hard drive died.Basically, if you liked Windows 98, in Windows ME you get a similar, fancier, slower version with feature-heavy multimedia extensions that guaranteed you wouldn't have enough memory for what you wanted to do. However it did meet Microsoft's objectives: it kept the cash flowing.

[darasen 0]

So much to respond to, makes me happy. I think Vista, rightly or not is a matter of debate, will be largely regarded as poorly as Windows ME. IF the next version of Windows happens to be better. The XKCD cartoon is funny. MS does tend to give stuff to students, especially in the IT courses. I think it is kind of like some crack dealers though where the first hit is free. They want a teeming mass of computer science grads that have grown up familiar with MS and little else.