R.I.P Microsoft?

ABCnews ^ | 2.10.05 | MICHAEL S. MALONE

[MarkL]

Symantec seems to have gone to hell, also.

And good luck getting help from Symantec, even when you're a dealer who sold the product!

We have a client who needed to use WinFax/Pro for their network fax (the idiot developer hard coded their API calls into his software!), and no matter what we did, the workstations refused to see the WinFax server! I finally found someone (no connected with Symantec) on the Internet who was willing to try to help, and he wanted me to set up PC/Anywhere on one of the workstations so he could "poke around," and see what the problem might be. Interestingly enough, as soon as I installed PC/Anywhere, the WinFax started working! When I contacted Symantec with this fix, their response was that it seems I had fixed the problem. My last email back to them was something along the lines of, "If I do not hear otherwise, I will assume that Symantec wants me to install 40 unlicensed copies of PC/Anywhere on systems to make their licensed copies of WinFax Pro to work." I never heard anything back.

But in the mean time, the client was pissed off for having to pay me nearly 30 hours of labor to get the problem fixed.

Mark

[new cruelty]

Longhorn reminds you of Foghorn Leghorn?

I hear long horn and I think University of Texas or the obvious...

[martin_fierro]

I mean, I dunno if Dvorak is ultimately fulla crap or not.

But his article raised an interesting enough proposition that I remembered it from last July.

[Conservatrix]

Well I am from Manhattan, that probably explains it.

[jriemer]

Somehow when I hear the name "Longhorn" I think of a certain Bugs Bunny Character...

Does that make the guy with the bat Bill Gates?

[Conservatrix]

Yes, definitely...

[Drango]

Longhorn is now two years late

'Nuff said.

[jammer]

Good story. They just don't care about anything but revenue from their overpriced products. I gave up on WinFax/Pro. Probably the "live update" from pcAnywhere fixed your problem, but I've had live update to Norton screw up pcAnywhere.

[JoJo Gunn]

No apologies needed. I just sometimes like to tie threads together that interest me.

[dennisw]

Dvorak got about 60 posts in response. Some are quite good.... not just one or two sentences. Amusing dissections of Ballmer's and Gate's drive to compete and win

http://discuss.pcmag.com/n/main.asp?webtag=pcmag&nav=messages&msg=40466

[martin_fierro]

Gates, Longhorn -- and a security hole.

[dennisw]

Part of the reason M$ can be late on Longhorn and screw around with it, perfect it, is because they have such a lock on the desktop OS and office suites.

My guess is security (of all kinds) will be the dominant theme in Longhorn. No pirating of Longhorn and enhanced internet security. Security for on-line financial transactions. Greatly reduced ability to pirate tunes, DVDs and software via file sharing.

Microsoft's most profitable alliance will be with Hollywood. Helping these rotters protect their intellectual property. The MS/Hollywood alliance is a natural given the way both get pirated all over the planet, though less so in the US and other developed nations

[jriemer]

Gates, Longhorn -- and a security hole.

[smacks head] I missed the obivous when selecting/posting that picture

[bgnn32]

It is cool, seemed to work pretty good, but it is not worth paying $200+ to upgrade from XP

[The KG9 Kid]

"... John Dvorak's track record for predicting the future has been abysmal."

I have to agree.

There's a reason Dvorak *should* have three billion dollars, but doesn't.

[Paleo Conservative]

I don't think I'll upgrade any of my current computers to Longhorn, but I think the indexing would greatly improve being able to find documents.

[Calvin Locke]

I was trying to try some of the free trial products, since Norton was expiring. But they threw in those dang
pop-ups complaining that I shut off NAV, so I went with the AVG trial and the Zone Alarm trial.

I haven't quite settled on a final combo. But as KeyWest points out, it's nice have everything in one place.

[chronic_loser]

A quick google on winfax pro and XP will reveal that you are not the only person who has had problems with this combo.

The truth is, they just don't work together. I fussed and cussed with winfax pro for almost 8 months, and finally gave up.

I now run a linux file and fax server, and share the fax as a part of a samba share for our little (8 machine) insurance brokerage.

It requires a bit more admin to shuffle the faxes to the right people, but it is better than having the #(@&$@ thing not work at all.

Norton knows it doesn't work

(PS. it seems to work better under sp1, or at least at times it works better. sp2 totally shuts it down.)

[MarkL]

A quick google on winfax pro and XP will reveal that you are not the only person who has had problems with this combo.

The truth is, they just don't work together. I fussed and cussed with winfax pro for almost 8 months, and finally gave up.

Actually, it was a pure Windows 2000 network, with Win2KSP4 Pro workstations... However, at Symatec support's recomendation, we would up running Win98SE as the WinFax server!

As I said, it wasn't until I installed PCAnywhere on the workstations that it started working.

Mark

[ShandaLear]

Longhorn is still in the works. MSFT isn't going anywhere any time soon.