Hi Gerry,

It's one thing to provide tools that help me create solutions for others (and let me make a living). It's another to put obstacles in the way and force me to tolerate it because they're the only game in town.

Like all companies that grow so big that they get out of touch with their customers ... < you finish the sentence>

They're getting tough to deal with. But I have to say that they are still much easier to deal with than Oracle.

A couple of years back, because I was in the area, I walked into the Northeast Regional sales office of Oracle (in Waltham, MA) and tried to actually ... can you believe it ... purchase ... yes ... "PURCHASE" ... their database product ... from right there in their sales office. No need for them to set an appointment. No need for them to travel to my location. No need for them to lay on the sales pitch and hope they could get a sale. I just walked in and wanted to buy.

They'd have none of that. By God! You can't just walk in an buy something! That's some kind of violation or something! They actually tried to send me away without letting me see a sales rep because I didn't have an appointment with them. I had to get a little agressive before they would relent and let a sales rep talk to me. They sent out two sales reps (in case I was dangerous or something). And they informed me that Oracle didn't quite do business this way. You see, first there's an appointment ... and then ... blah ... blah ... blah. They eventually gave me a name of a person in California to call and I eventually got the Oracle database.

But what crap. And that wasn't an isolated incident. I had two other experiences relating to Oracle where it felt like I had to do combat in order to purchase their stuff. Their purchasing procedures were a ~real~ PIA.

At least Micrsoft makes it easy for you to give them your money.<g>

Guy





>>You'd think that MS wouldn't want to bother with all the crap that is going to come back at them from the MSDN type of customers. (I don't think my circumstances and my kind of operation is unique among MSDN Universal subscribers.)<s>
>
>Why would they care about the "crap" once they have your money ? Busy signal ...
>
>I agree. I just renewed my Universal subscription; it will probably be the last time. MS thinks we're all thieves.