Following is a leaked transcript of Bill Gates to his employees
regarding his personal experience with windows moviemaker download. and
here is the response when journalist confronted him with the transcript
/There's not a day that I don't send a piece of e-mail ... like
that piece of e-mail. That's my job./
and he refers this encounter during his farewell
During his farewell event at Microsoft this morning, Gates referred
to this, and poked a little fun at us/: "One of the newspapers had
some e-mail that I sent about how maybe Windows could have been better
at something, and they said, 'This is a shocking e-mail. Shocking!'
And I said, 'What do you think I do all day? Sending an e-mail like
that, that is my job. That's what it's all about. We're here to make
things better."/
Check this out..
---- Original Message ----
FROM: Bill Gates
SENT: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 10:05 AM
TO: Jim Allchin
Cc: Chris Jones (WINDOWS); Bharat Shah (NT); Joe Peterson; Will Poole;
Brian Valentine; Anoop Gupta (RESEARCH)
SUBJECT: Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame
I am quite disappointed at how Windows Usability has been going
backwards and the program management groups don't drive usability
issues.
Let me give you my experience from yesterday.
I decided to download (Moviemaker) and buy the Digital Plus pack
... so I went to Microsoft.com. They have a download place so I went
there.
The first 5 times I used the site it timed out while trying to
bring up the download page. Then after an 8 second delay I got it to
come up.
This site is so slow it is unusable.
It wasn't in the top 5 so I expanded the other 45.
These 45 names are totally confusing. These names make stuff like:
C:\Documents and Settings\billg\My Documents\My Pictures seem clear.
They are not filtered by the system ... and so many of the things
are strange.
I tried scoping to Media stuff. Still no moviemaker. I typed in
movie. Nothing. I typed in movie maker. Nothing.
So I gave up and sent mail to Amir saying - where is this
Moviemaker download? Does it exist?
So they told me that using the download page to download something
was not something they anticipated.
They told me to go to the main page search button and type movie
maker (not moviemaker!).
I tried that. The site was pathetically slow but after 6 seconds of
waiting up it came.
I thought for sure now I would see a button to just go do the download.
In fact it is more like a puzzle that you get to solve. It told me
to go to Windows Update and do a bunch of incantations.
This struck me as completely odd. Why should I have to go somewhere
else and do a scan to download moviemaker?
So I went to Windows update. Windows Update decides I need to
download a bunch of controls. (Not) just once but multiple times where
I get to see weird dialog boxes.
Doesn't Windows update know some key to talk to Windows?
Then I did the scan. This took quite some time and I was told it
was critical for me to download 17megs of stuff.
This is after I was told we were doing delta patches to things but
instead just to get 6 things that are labeled in the SCARIEST possible
way I had to download 17meg.
So I did the download. That part was fast. Then it wanted to do an
install. This took 6 minutes and the machine was so slow I couldn't
use it for anything else during this time.
What the heck is going on during those 6 minutes? That is crazy.
This is after the download was finished.
Then it told me to reboot my machine. Why should I do that? I
reboot every night -- why should I reboot at that time?
So I did the reboot because it INSISTED on it. Of course that meant
completely getting rid of all my Outlook state.
So I got back up and running and went to Windows Update again. I
forgot why I was in Windows Update at all since all I wanted was to
get Moviemaker.
So I went back to Microsoft.com and looked at the instructions. I
have to click on a folder called WindowsXP. Why should I do that?
Windows Update knows I am on Windows XP.
What does it mean to have to click on that folder? So I get a bunch
of confusing stuff but sure enough one of them is Moviemaker.
So I do the download. The download is fast but the Install takes
many minutes. Amazing how slow this thing is.
At some point I get told I need to go get Windows Media Series 9 to
download.
So I decide I will go do that. This time I get dialogs saying
things like "Open" or "Save". No guidance in the instructions which to
do. I have no clue which to do.
The download is fast and the install takes 7 minutes for this thing.
So now I think I am going to have Moviemaker. I go to my add/remove
programs place to make sure it is there.
It is not there.
What is there? The following garbage is there. Microsoft Autoupdate
Exclusive test package, Microsoft Autoupdate Reboot test package,
Microsoft Autoupdate testpackage1. Microsoft AUtoupdate testpackage2,
Microsoft Autoupdate Test package3.
Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?
The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable. This
program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up.
But that is just the start of the crap. Later I have listed things
like Windows XP Hotfix see Q329048 for more information. What is
Q329048? Why are these series of patches listed here? Some of the
patches just things like Q810655 instead of saying see Q329048 for
more information.
What an absolute mess.
Moviemaker is just not there at all.
So I give up on Moviemaker and decide to download the Digital Plus Package.
I get told I need to go enter a bunch of information about myself.
I enter it all in and because it decides I have mistyped something
I have to try again. Of course it has cleared out most of what I typed.
I try (typing) the right stuff in 5 times and it just keeps
clearing things out for me to type them in again.
So after more than an hour of craziness and making my programs list
garbage and being scared and seeing that Microsoft.com is a terrible
website I haven't run Moviemaker and I haven't got the plus package.
The lack of attention to usability represented by these experiences
blows my mind. I thought we had reached a low with Windows Network
places or the messages I get when I try to use 802.11. (don't you just
love that root certificate message?)
When I really get to use the stuff I am sure I will have more feedback.
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/library/2003Jangatesmoviemaker.pdf[1]
This shows how the proprietary? software makers treat their
users..like low-life scum..
Links:
------
[1]
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/library/2003Jangatesmoviemaker.pdf
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL:
http://ilug-cochin.org/pipermail/mailinglist_ilug-cochin.org/attachments/20080701/951d8116/attachment.html
