When things go wrong with Office, do you blame it or Windows?
Bill G
” I read an article which quoted a Microsoft executive saying that they didn’t know if problems with Office where the fault of Office or Windows. Are they kidding – if Microsoft doesn’t know where problems are with Microsoft software running on Microsoft’s operating system, how can we trust them?”
It does seem a strange thing for Microsoft to say – their staff are normally more guarded in their comments. In fact they didn’t say that at all.
It took a little while to find the source of Bill G’s quote – we think he’s talking about a quote from Directions on Microsoft – an independent organisation that reports on goings on at Microsoft.
It does raise the interesting point about where the buck stops – with Office or Windows?
Office depends on Windows running properly and, in some cases, for specific features. The ‘instant’ search in Outlook 2007 depends on the Windows Indexing Service – since the latter has been such a performance drag (with larger amounts of data) that has affected Outlook.
We’re pleased to say that the release candidate for Vista Service Pack 1 shows considerable, though belated, improvements to the Indexing Service.
Similarly, sluggish File Open / Save dialog boxes might not be Office as much as Windows not responding.
Outlook, the lumbering resource hog that it is, can be very susceptible to problems elsewhere on your computer.
In our view, Office 2007 has suffered from being reliant on a flawed and prematurely released Windows Vista. Some of the bugs in Vista, like file copying and the indexing service are unforgivable and should never have been exposed to the public – they should have been ‘show-stoppers’ than prevented Vista being released to the public. That it’s taken Microsoft another year to release fixes for these and other major problems is an additional scandal.
Once Vista Service Pack 1 is released, we feel it’ll be an opportunity to review the suitability of Office 2007.
