[TechniCT]

I had to deal with their customer support. It is a nightmare. Right now, I have Vista, Office, Visual Studio, and I even bought a crappy Zune. That's all going out the window.

[mduell]

Brand new account just to spam your digg link.

[TechniCT]

No, it's brand new because I am searching Apple boards b/c I am new to that and open source. I posted the story b/c I find MS support unbelievable. I didn't realize that would be offensive, so there's the direct link now.

One thing I wasn't wrong with Apple in the past was that it's overloaded with pretentious users.

[ghporter]

That Digg link is pathetic too. Somebody's blog posts about NOT recognizing that they're talking to a bot through email... And his destroying his XBox because he couldn't get through to a human? Didn't he realize that X Box Live can be managed FROM XBOX LIVE? And you CAN cancel your subscription through XBox Live.

As for pretentiousness, acting hurt isn't going to help her. WE are targeted by spammers for everything from shoes to "click my link so I get paid" garbage. Your post looks just like that sort of thing.

Prove us wrong. Post something interesting, like what Mac hardware you plan to buy and why, and you'll get a lot of positive and helpful feedback.

Just griping that Microsoft has lousy email support wastes your time and ours. On the other hand, actually CALLING their XBox support gets you GREAT service. I've done it. Sure it's overseas, but I could understand the technician's accent (Eastern European for once) and they understood me and got everything right the first time. Kevin Richard is either a fool or really hard up for blog material if he expects what you linked to to be interesting or of use.

[::maroma::]

Is that blog post a friggin joke? Is this Kevin Richard dude serious about this? If he was being serious in his correspondence with MS, he is a massive moron.

But if he was just messing around for fun out of pure boredom, then I guess its pretty funny.

[Chuckit]

Is that **** supposed to be humor? TL;DR

[TechniCT]

OK, I can see the link is rude. It's gone, but I am sincere that I am moving away from them. My problem, in general is trying to get support via the internet for many MS applications. This is espeically true with VB .NET and ASP 2.0. I think it is totally unreasonable for them to require phone support for problems. For example, I had the same problem when installing Vista. I had the beta. I bought the ultimate upgrade, and it would not install. After not receiving support via email, I had to call and end up PAYING for support after actually buying the upgrade. I figured the crazier the email responses the better chance it would be escalated to resolution. None of it was serious on my part, but their responses show they can't put problems in perspective. I've been looking at this board to get info b/c I want to move to programming outside the .NET framework. I've been with MS so long, I really have no idea what Mac or other alternatives are like.

[Rumor]

What exactly do you do with computers? Sounds like you do some programming but for what?

[TechniCT]

I build databases and reporting web applications for serveral customer support centers.

[besson3c]

If you are a developer, you should look at both open source software and running Linux if you really want to be free of any sort of lock-in. Otherwise, you are trading one proprietary company for another.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, but I'm just passing on this suggestion since Linux in particular is a great platform for developing on, as long as you aren't writing in Windows-only languages.