I do not know, their system will probably be proprietary, since they built it all from scratch, it allows many instances of the same universe with fantastic quality, and o lost relational data. Your ship will move from a planet and others will see it, even though they are using a different server. The primary hold up they experienced is getting it all to sync correctly. It works pretty damn good.

I agree. But now, if you run Windows Update, it forces the setting to always run regardless of what the user wants. This even applies to servers, where you want absolute control over patching and testing!

"That is a bad business model"

Agreed!

I misread your first response here about MS not allowing competitors like Apple and IBM at the same distributors. I still don't have a problem with that. They had to have had the market share by that point or the Distributors would not have agreed to such a thing. Besides, I looked into getting setup with IBM as a reseller of their computers and it was like was like pulling teeth - I decided not to pursue the idea. I can't hardly imagine IBM or Apple either one truly pursuing the distributors as real distribution options. Where is they reseller base now? I never had MS make me, as an authorized MS reseller, agree to not resell these other brands.

In my early years, I worked in retail stores selling computers and they had IBM computers as well as clones. If I remember right, they even had IBMs PS2s with OS2 on them - the customers bought the clone PCs with DOS and early versions of Windows - this would have been 1987 or 1988 or so. They cost more too - people just didn't buy them.

Microsoft was not forcing distributors to sell only MS based PC's - That is total BS. I owned an IT company in Tampa, FL from the early 90' to 2006. I custom built computers for individuals - but mostly businesses and none of the multiple distributors I bought parts from forced me to buy MS. I bought from a few local suppliers as well as TechData, MaLabs, CDW, Ingram Micro, etc... Whether I bought pre-built white box or all the components to build from scratch, they never in any circumstance ever made me buy any OS with my orders. Now, did they force such agreements with someone like Dell for lower prices points - maybe, but again, they could have went with OS2 - or the early variants of Linux/Unix or DOS based systems.

The point is, people based their purchasing decisions (including the resellers) on bang for the buck and went with MS based systems. The hardware - because MS did not force particular hardware configurations enabled an less expensive hardware option than many of the competing systems - like Apple and IBM. MS developed to fit a niche that was open and it advanced the computer markets and computers getting to the consumer faster than any other of the hardware companies (like IBM) or specialized companies like Novell, etc... had the vision to go after.

Maybe Microsoft has messed up some - no doubt - there's things they've been doing as of late that are making me consider looking elsewhere - it's just hard to swallow after putting 30 or so years into them. I ended up moving to the PC world after investing a lot of time and effort into Apple when they were working with the Apple II line - until they screwed their customers and dropped that line like a rock and went in the Mac direction.

But, that doesn't change the fact that they have had a huge positive impact on the PC world. I agree that they should not be forcing these updates on people. I have a particular system I'm been fighting with recently because the new driver they keep pushing on it fails. I roll back the driver, and give it a day or two and they've pushed to new driver back on it again. Yep, very annoying. They remind me more and more of Apple these days. It is however rather ridiculous considering the vast customer base and hardware base to assume they could ever push out any update that isn't going to cause some people grief. In how many of those cases is it because of a driver or software that was improperly written by 3rd parties that caused the failure - not truly due to MS writing a bad update.

MS needs to improve customer service - especially for resellers if that is who they want handling the majority of their support issues. They need to give control back - of course there are an awful lot of app type users out there that don't want to think and learn and expect it to just work and do it's thing. That's hard to accomplish without taking away control.

They should have gotten out there faster in the mobile markets - but you also know that is one of the reasons they are pushing Win10 so hard- to get more developers to work on Apps since they will then work across the mobiles, phones, desktops, etc... The faster they can move pre-Win10 systems to Win10, the bigger that market is - and they hope to then take a much bigger chunk than 5% or 6%. MS even giving it away for free - when has that ever happened?!? They have rebuilt their .NET framework open source and targeting Linux so Apps and software can even move cross platform - and again, Win10 has to do with this coming together. They are betting a lot on Win10 and are trying very hard to push it out fast to gain the advantages they are looking for to expand into these other markets at a much bigger level.

MS support and tooo many of MS devs are coming from India. MS has spent a huge amount of money overseas in training people to take over the developer market - then import them back here or use them over VOIP systems while still in India. I believe this has had a large impact on their customer service quality as well as the quality of the code coming from MS. They have become so focused on moving quickly with the markets that they are taking a hit on quality - and for devs like me that have 20 other jobs - it makes it very difficult to keep up with their constant changes to the dev software (like Visual Studio). New version ever 18 months to 2 years. if they would set back and plan better they could come out with single releases less often where people could adjust and become highly proficient again before they go to next release. But as stated - they don't really listen to people much. But that's their prerogative. If they get it right - everyone is happy - but if they don't they fail.

I don't give MS a free pass - but they get a lot of criticism that is not earned from too many people that only listen to one side of the "hate the big evil company" hype.

I tend to agree with you position, blarman. Although not strictly anti MS, I do think it is their core business to find ways to cushion the impact of a bad update. You cannot get a live person to help any more, and their forums are also a bunch of very aristocratic "MVP"s. Look at the "Win7 won't update" topics and you find nothing but the same answers over and over, and people saying "it doesn't work" then silence. There are dedicated web pages to how to kill orff the Win10 monster they delivered unasked, there are web pages that now tell you how to get around Windows Update as well. Not what I call stellar support, as none of this comes from MS.

I think MS has gotten a good line on their retail customer base - it's just that their customers (at least individual private sector market - not business sector) are just not tech savvy and want everything simple and for free. I have build more than a few hundred computers - mostly out of new parts, and many piece meal from used stuff as well. I have dealt with elderly people too. And they make my point - they don't understand the tech. They don't want a bunch of choices. They just want it to be easy and work. MS IMHO is pandering to this crowd and leaving the business world and tech savvy people with fewer and fewer options.

Look at Office - many options - very powerful - but compare Outlook to the Mail App. I hate the mail App. It's barely functional by my standards. I actually use the options that Outlook has - like rules, auto responders, signatures, etc... But that's too hard for an App (sarcasm intended here). Granted - an App could still do this - but they choose not to include those options. How many average users ever use that stuff in Outlook? Very few that I’ve ever met. They read their mail, reply, delete. Most don't even setup additional folders. I have liked the fact that MS has kept giving the options and customizations for all these years, but I think they are beginning to give in. At least on what they are producing for the individual end users. Maybe they will maintain the two separate lines.

I'm not really sure what their long term angle is with their cloud operations - like Azure and Office 365. Maybe it's just to stop copyright infringement - or maybe to take away control and simplify there as well. MS's direction as of late has been hard to read. I think a lot of it also has to do with major infiltration of MS by Linux and open source proponents. Their direction and revenue streams are in flux because of this as well. Chaos does not lend itself to top notch quality.

I think their Update model is a good one in general – however – it has taken a hit as of late. I do not like the forced updates – it should be an option. It should be like before where you can choose to apply critical updates automatically or manually and the same option for non-critical. It would be nice if they would have a little better explanation of what the updates do and what files they effect – as well as rollback options that actually stick. Like my driver issue – what’s the point in allowing me to roll the driver back if you’re going to keep pushing the same new one back onto the machine. Maybe roll it back and if they have a newer driver (even new than the one you rolled back from) have that be applied. Or give an option on each driver to allow you to stop any individual driver from being changed by updates. But then again – the crowd that screamed for auto updates for ease and security reasons will baulk at this idea as many people will simply not manually apply new updates that fix security issues – causing a whole new bunch of problems. In the end – I think what they are doing almost makes sense. Set the OS up to auto update by default – but give tech savvy people a way to control this process. This will keep the machines the safest while allowing people that are responsible to keep their options open. But – this will end in bricked systems on occasion. MS cannot anticipate every conceivable issue, hardware configuration, software configuration, infested systems, etc… There are probably trillions of trillions or more possibilities. It’s simply isn’t rational that they can catch them all.

Look at what was going on in the early 2000’s – there were so many machines infected with spyware, malware, adware, etc… that it was choking the internet with all the traffic. This is really when MS started pushing the whole update system because people were demanding that their OS be more secure. They have made a lot of headway – but their recent approach is wrong.