Just Curious

  • Thread starter Thread starter David Wright
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David Wright

Just out of curiousity, why would Microsoft want to ignore the requests of
their customer's?

There are several requests that I have seen repeatedly in many forums on the
net, in fact too many to list, but I will list the top three that I have
seen.

1) Concurrent sessions via remote PC's
This was a greatly used "hack" in XP, surely it wouldn't have been
to hard to implement in Vista.

2) Using Media Center PC's as Extenders to each other.
To OP's, like myself, who own more than one Media Center PC (I have
four at the moment), would like the ability to use our Media Center's as
Extenders to our other Media Center PC's. We can set them up to share
vids/pics/music, so why not livetv? There are options such as Vaio Media
and Orb that can do this, why not Vista?

3) Support for more file types on Extenders
Why not add in support for more file types besides WMV, etc.? Why
is it that we have to resort to apps like Transcode360 to play other video
types?


Surely if Microsoft wants to compete in the IT markets for years to come, it
would strive to satisfy it's customers. As with any business, if you ignore
your customers, you won't have them in the future. People will start
looking for alternatives, spelling doom for the business. Does Microsoft
think that they are too big to even care?
 
David said:
Just out of curiousity, why would Microsoft want to ignore the requests
of their customer's?
Click to expand...

Simple, they don't care what their paying customers want. They only care
about making a profit.

Alias
 
Alias said:
Simple, they don't care what their paying customers want. They only care
about making a profit.
Click to expand...
That's part of what I was asking, you can't make "profit" if you don't have
customer's to sell to. Surely Microsoft would want to satisfy the
wants/requests of it's customer's to ensure "profit" for many years to come.
If they don't, the customer's would look to alternative products. If another
software company came in and started satisfying what the customer's want, MS
wouldn't see "profits", as they would lose their customer's to the company
that did satisfy the wants/requests of the customer's.
 
David said:
That's part of what I was asking, you can't make "profit" if you don't have
customer's to sell to. Surely Microsoft would want to satisfy the
wants/requests of it's customer's to ensure "profit" for many years to come.
If they don't, the customer's would look to alternative products. If another
software company came in and started satisfying what the customer's want, MS
wouldn't see "profits", as they would lose their customer's to the company
that did satisfy the wants/requests of the customer's.
Click to expand...

MS figures, and rightfully so, that they have a de facto monopoly so
they need not worry about pesky customers. After, all with WPA and
WGA/N, they assume you are a thief until you prove otherwise. With Vista
-- their last hurrah -- it's even worse.

Alias
 
With regards to " Concurrent sessions via remote PC's "
The Windows Server product does this.
 
David Wright said:
1) Concurrent sessions via remote PC's
This was a greatly used "hack" in XP, surely it wouldn't have been
to hard to implement in Vista.
Click to expand...

Why would they do that when they will lose sales for their server OS, which
has proper terminal server support?

ss.
 
First things first, before I answer that, do you a rough idea of the cost of
Windows Vista Server?

Plus, both you and Gary provided responses to #1, of which I am very much
appreciative to you both, but what about the other two highly requested
items?
 
David Wright said:
First things first, before I answer that, do you a rough idea of the cost
of Windows Vista Server?
Click to expand...

Vista Server, currently being called Longhorn Server, won't be realeased for
a couple of years or so. Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition costs around
$600.
Plus, both you and Gary provided responses to #1, of which I am very much
appreciative to you both, but what about the other two highly requested
items?
Click to expand...

I didn't answer to that, as I don't know the answer. I never used XPMCE, so
Vista Ultimate is my first use of Media Centre.

ss.
 
3) Support for more file types on Extenders
Why not add in support for more file types besides WMV, etc.? Why
is it that we have to resort to apps like Transcode360 to play other video
types?
Click to expand...

Because they want to make WMV the standard, I've a sneaky feeling that now
that the Playstation 3 plays DiVX/MPG4 that the XBox360 will not be far
behind, I'm heartily sick of all this crap when going from one company to
another, just like DRM - mind you even Bill Gates has said that he thinks
DRM is wrong now - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6182657.stm

I won't hold my breath though, corporates never do whats good for
customers - only whats good for them.
 
The answer to 2 and 3 is that it is not possible to satisfy every PC user
need in the operating system. Why not provide more complete editing and
formatting features in WordPad? Or why not give Paint all the features of
Photoshop? Or instead of Solitaire, why not a game of the caliber of Doom
III?

Microsoft provides SDK's for creating Media Center extenders. If there's a
large market of people with multiple MCE computers, there might be a large
market for such an extender if you choose to develop one. If you don't have
the skills but you are a venture capitalist, I would be happy to develop one
for you.

Dale
 
David Wright said:
Just out of curiousity, why would Microsoft want to ignore the
requests of their customer's?

There are several requests that I have seen repeatedly in many
forums on the net, in fact too many to list, but I will list the top
three that I have seen.

1) Concurrent sessions via remote PC's
This was a greatly used "hack" in XP, surely it wouldn't have
been to hard to implement in Vista.
Click to expand...

No it would not be "hard" to implement from a programming perspective
and the functionality existing in some early alpha builds - the
primary reasons for this are two fold - one is that Windows Vista is
just not designed to behave well as a mult session OS - yes you ca
fast user switch but the hidden sessions are put into a starved state
as regards system resources such as memory and CPU scheduled time.

So for a real multi user experience as the other posters have pointed
out use the Terminal Services capability of a Windows Server product.
When running in full TS mode the memory management and CPU scheduling
is altered to allow for multi concurrent sessions and to enable the
perforce characteristics of all sessions to remain acceptable.

The second reason is a licensing on. Windows Vista as will XP is a
single user product, in that a single license installs to a single
machine and a single user uses that OS at any one time - Fast Switched
users are not interactive so are regarded like background processes.
If Vista/XP was made to hold multiple interactive concurrent session
the licensing would be a nightmare - again a problem solved on the
Server product.
The hack you mention is a flagrant breach of the Windows XP licensing
2) Using Media Center PC's as Extenders to each other.
To OP's, like myself, who own more than one Media Center PC
(I have four at the moment), would like the ability to use our Media
Center's as Extenders to our other Media Center PC's. We can set
them up to share vids/pics/music, so why not livetv? There are
options such as Vaio Media and Orb that can do this, why not Vista?
Click to expand...

I believe there are issues with the "rebroadcast" of recorded
programming such as TV etc.
3) Support for more file types on Extenders
Why not add in support for more file types besides WMV, etc.?
Why is it that we have to resort to apps like Transcode360 to play
other video types?
Click to expand...

no idea
 
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