The Blog

  • July 27, 2009
  • Agita

    Microsoft’s difficulties with delivering software continue.  Internet Explorer version 8 (IE8) is the latest example.  An article on ZDNet today said the company plans to ship a patch to users.  I have to say that the company has usually taken a pro-customer and pro-CRM approach to dealing with customer problems.

    Last week I downloaded an update to MS Office for the Mac (version 12.20) only to discover that it would not open any of the new file formats like .pptx.  I found that incredible — their proprietary format and they can’t open it!  I had been working on a presentation in .pptx for several weeks and it was due the day the upgrade failed.

    Not to worry, I tried to down-rev the update by going back to an automatic back-up I keep on my Time Machine.  If you don’t know what a Time Machine is, you should.  In that one device there is a routere and a large server grade disk.  The Time Machine does automatic back-ups while I work with negligible overhead.

    I had never used the Time Machine for a restore before and didn’t know how to do the restore.  I called Microsoft and got several pieces of good news.  First, the support call was free because it involved a known problem that was Microsoft’s fault.  Second, the people in the call center are Mac experts and my agent was able to walk me through the process.

    That’s great as far as I am concerned.  What started as a great deal of agita for me ended with real satisfaction.  Nonetheless, it would be very nice if Microsoft could get out of the graceful recovery business and back into the business of making bulletproof software products.

    Published: 15 years ago


    Discussion

    • July 29th, 2009 at 12:53 pm    

      Denis,

      You said it would be nice if Microsoft could get “back into the business of making bulletproof software products.” I don’t think they have ever been in that business, but I agree with the underlying sentiment.

      Cary

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