Tommy, Tommy, Tommy... you just don't understand!

MS has the benefit of computing at large as their driving agenda. Sometimes 'old technologies' - even though they are deployed successfully and productively in thousands upon thousands of shops - simply are not good for the customer.

XBox is decidedly NOT a "failed gaming system" because MS has not (yet) told us that it is. Until they do, it must be a great system! When they announce it's discontinuance THEN we can say it was not what the cusatomer wanted, but not a minute before. And anyway, XBox is a separate business unit and so they no doubt operate under a different business model.

How many other companies do you know of that produce products that compete with each other. Surely Proctor and Gamble doesn't make more than 1 brand of soap (to get/keep as many customers as possible). Surely RJR doesn't produce more than 1 brand of cigarette (to get/keep as many customers as possible). Surely Campbells doesn't make more than one soup brand (to get/keep as many customers as possible). Surely GM doesn't produce more than 1 car brand (to get/keep as many customers as possible)... ad infinitum. MS is unique becaue MS KNOWS what's good for their customers. Those other guys only know what's good for themselves!

I installed Office 2003 from my MSDN subscription. I had heard that it was a much more powerful product overall with future development possibilities in mind. And that Outlook was vastly improved.
Well, overall Office is much prettier. Much! Very pleasing to the eye! And Outlook is a far more useable/helpful product. But my real interest was Word. I expected some thing to have (finally) been fixed and I expected that some of the new heavily advertised stuff would be real neat. What did I get?...
1) I found none of my old gripes addressed;
2) I found many new problems in the short time I've been using it;
3) I found that Help now comes across the Internet!#@$!#@;
4) I found that one of the more heavily promoted new features (name escapes me at the moment) is 'there' (I guess) but the information to instruct me how to use it will be available 'by April 2004'.
There is absolutely NOTHING compelling about Office 2003 and if I had gone out and paid full price for it I would be one cheezed-off person...until I remembered that MS only has my interests and well-being in their hearts. Then I would have been pleased to have spent the money so that MS could continue to serve me so well.

MS talked, 2 years ago, about "listening to their customers". MS talked, 2 years ago, about recognizing that it was really the small/medium sized business that was their major installed customer base. At that time MS created positions with "Evangelist" right in their job titles to prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that they meant what they said!!! How can anything be more clear? What does poor MS have to do to convince you that there ain't nuttin wrong here except the way you are thinking about this.

With any luck at all MS will convince Attorney General Ashcroft that the Liberty Bill (or whatever it is called) ought to have criticism of MS included as a capital offense equating to sedition and treason. Then maybe you will see the error of your ways. And if you don't you will have lots of time on your hands to contemplate your position.

cheers

>Billions upon billions of dollars to waste on XBox, a failed gaming system, but FoxPro can't get a decent driver for Yukon.
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>The Priorities are not right here.
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>I wonder if Word, Excel, etc. ad nauseum, will get a good driver....... sigh......
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>Tommy
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>>>You have let the cat out of the bag here Ken - you should clarify exactly where the functionality gaps will be. Up to now - I had always thought that Fox would play well with Yukon. You know what they say about assumptions!!!
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>>Yes, this is not good news. We were wondering where I work if maybe it has to do with VFP using ODBC for Views and SPT and Yukon not comming out with an updated ODBC driver and only having an OLEDB provider.
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>>BOb