Quotes on Microsoft's Poor Product Quality

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-ESTHER SCHINDLER, OS/2 Magazine

"... Microsoft has managed to make me feel like a computer neophyte groping for answers that should be readily apparent. Indeed, I feel as though I may have committed myself ... to what Novell CEO Eric Schmidt once called the Microsoft Roach Motel--software that's easy to get into and hard to get out of ... I feel as if I am fighting Microsoft for the right to use my own computer efficiently."

-STEWART ALSOP, Fortune Magazine

"Gates and company talk about total cost of ownership and never once take responsibility for the fact that Microsoft has created an operating system that encourages sloppy practices and continuously degraded performance. This becomes obvious only when you spend time on a new system that seems twice as fast as a 200-MHz Pentium but can't possibly be that fast."

-JOHN DVORAK, PC Magazine

"My personal [Windows 95] workstation is so buggy that ... [it] crashes at least once or twice a day, usually in broad daylight for no apparent reason ... The answer, I'm sure, is to get a new hard drive, format it, install the latest version of Windows on it, and reinstall everything important from the old drive."

-BRIAN LIVINGSTON, InfoWorld Magazine

"If [the Microsoft Network] were a car, it would be recalled in a minute, so here we have an installation program that destroys Windows, takes days to install, removes vital files when uninstalled and isn't reliable when installed. MSN has cost its customers business, time, and at least one round-trip airline ticket."

-JIM LOUDERBACK, Editorial Director, PC Week Magazine [Click here for the full text.]

"They're [Microsoft] being rather disingenuous about a number of things. They've always had a very casual attitude towards security and viruses. All of their systems are just designed to host viruses. I mean, it's like a petri dish with the best culture you could buy. And all the issues about portability, of course, don't matter in the Microsoft world because there's only one platform. I mean the license-there's the [letter of intent between Microsoft and Sun] that they signed. It was just about running applets inside the Internet Explorer. Basically just sort of extending their Web browser."

-GOSLING, Inventor of Java, Sun Microsystems

"You could argue that Microsoft is the product of clever strategy, mediocre technology, and a hell of a lot of increasing returns."

-BRIAN ARTHURE, Economist

"The problem (and the genius) regarding Microsoft's products is bloat. Microsoft's penchant for producing overweight code is not an accident. It's the business model for the company ... While [bloatware has] made Bill Gates the world's richest guy, it's made life miserable for people who have to use these computers and expect them to run without crashing or dying."

-JOHN DVORAK, PC Magazine

"The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armour to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he who, by peddling second-rate technology, led them into it in the first place."

-DOUGLAS ADAMS, Author, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy [Click here for the full text.]

"Let's clear up some confusion right now. Here are some of the features the [Microsoft] Zero Administration NetPC will include: automatic pre-boot configuration; nightly maintenance; automatic upgrades, scans, and policy enforcement; remote problem resolution; security restrictions; diagnostics for monitoring and predicting failures; a remote wake utility, Web-based management, messaging-based management, and developer kits. Here are the administration features built into the Network Computer: a network connector. You tell me which one is the 'zero-administration,' ultimate network-computing device."

-NICHOLAS PETRELEY, Sr. Editor, InfoWorld

"The best thing about Windows 95, of course, is the mountains of software designed specifically for it. There are programs to compress memory, recover a damaged registry, remove the heaps of unneeded files Windows accumulates, tune sluggish performance, and undo a few of the many problems that can occur when installing new software, to mention but a few. There is even software designed to intercept system faults to improve your chances of saving your work before you have to reboot."

-NICHOLAS PETRELEY, Sr. Editor, InfoWorld

"We have no intention of shipping another bloated OS and shoving it down the throats of our users."

-PAUL MARITZ, Vice President, Microsoft

"A bug in Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS) 3.0 can give malicious hackers an opportunity to bring the Web server crashing down."

-InfoWorld

"I go out and buy a copy of WinCable 2003 ... naturally, WinCable 2003 won't install on my General Instruments WinTV-compatible. Unfortunately, Microsoft's technical support can't help me because they haven't yet been trained on WinCable 2003. So I have to figure out for myself that I need a flash update to the BIOS on the cable card in my WinTV. I use my neighbor's WinTV to download the file. After the BIOS upgrade, I get WinCable 2003 installed ..."

-NICHOLAS PETRELEY, Sr. Editor, InfoWorld

"I was startled by the number of people who periodically reinstall Windows and their applications after backing up their documents and then formatting their C: drives. I've heard of individuals doing this, but I didn't realize how many corporations routinely perform this procedure for all users. One IS manager does it every 95 days. (So that's what the 95 stands for ... )"

-BRIAN LIVINGSTON, InfoWorld [Click here for the full text.]

" I am convinced that if General Motors could eliminate [Microsoft] Office from their entire company, they could get the 1999 cars out next year at half price"

-SCOTT McNEALY, CEO, Sun Microsystems

"Nothing is worse than a piece of hardware designed by a software company with a monopoly."

-STEWART ALSOP, Fortune Magazine

"We had 12.9 gigabytes of PowerPoint slides on our network. And I thought, 'What a huge waste of corporate productivity.' So we banned it. And we've had three unbelievable record-breaking fiscal quarters since we banned PowerPoint. Now, I would argue that every company in the world, if it would just ban PowerPoint, would see their earnings skyrocket. Employees would stand around going, 'What do I do? Guess I've got to go to work.'"

-SCOTT McNEALY, CEO, Sun Microsystems

"... Microsoft has taken a perfectly good standard, broken it, and then told us that we have to buy expensive programs that support the broken interface rather than use the free ones that come with all operating systems in the world except Microsoft operating systems."

-ALLEN HOLUB, Programmer and Columnist

"Paul Newman -- not to be confused with the famous actor -- gets very steamed up whenever you mention Microsoft. A veteran technical director with UK-based systems integrator Pacific Systems International, Newman has spent 20 years earning his bread and butter putting together computer systems for giant corporate clients. 'Our whole company, and our clients' companies, are stuffed with Microsoft products, and we don't like it,' he growls. 'We all got into Windows NT, and that was a big disaster. This NT thing has got no clothes.'"

-Information Strategy Magazine

"First of all, as good as Win NT appears to be, I'm not sure I want a phone company switching to it to run it's network. And heck, Microsoft has never gotten DOS -- a bloated file loader posing as an OS -- to work bug free. Now this? Let's not forget that Microsoft's own mega-Web site was seriously infected by a Win NT bug this summer. If I find out that Microsoft is selling fly-by-wire software to Airbus Industries or Boeing, then I'm going back to rail travel."

-JOHN DVORAK, PC Magazine

"The software empire that was built on a C:\ prompt, Microsoft has done for software what McDonald's did for the hamburger."

-PC MAGAZINE, June 1997

"Every time you turn on your new car, you're turning on 20 microprocessors. Every time you use an ATM, you're using a computer. Every time I use a settop box or game machine, I'm using a computer. The only computer you don't know how to work is your Microsoft computer, right?"

-SCOTT McNEALY, CEO, Sun Microsystems

"We get a million calls a month saying, 'hey, this product is confusing.'"

-BILL GATES

"Although we disagree with Mr. Gates about the best way to read magazines, we do agree that sometimes the old way is still the best. For example, we generally prefer typewriters to Microsoft Word, and we find that our sturdy abacus crashes less often than Excel."

-MICHAEL KINSLEY, Editor, Slate (Microsoft-owned online publication), after Bill Gates admitted that he preffered print magazines over online magazines

"Why can't Microsoft solve [technical problems]? Complacency. Microsoft has no competition to speak of. No incentive to hurry. No urgency to its mission. If it misses its target by, oh say ... two years, what are we going to do about it? Put OS/2 on our machines out of protest? Throw our $3,000 computers away and buy Macs instead? Throw our software away and switch to Unix workstations?

Of course not. We're stuck. We're screwed."

-JESSE BERST, ZDNet AnchorDesk

"Microsoft is going to argue that since most users are now familiar with the way a Web browser works, the browser will be an easier interface for novices to use in finding stuff on their own computers. And that might be true. But if it is true, it's an admission of awful truth for Microsoft: It's saying, 'After all these years and versions of Windows we still haven't figured out how to make personal computing easy enough for an intelligent person to learn easily.'"

- SCOTT ROSENBERG, Salon Magazine

"If you can't make it good, make it look good."

-BILL GATES, 1995

"Like medieval peasants, computer manufacturers and millions of users are locked in a seemingly eternal lease with their evil landlord, who comes around every two years to collect billions of dollars of taxes in return for mediocre services."

-MARK HARRIS, Electronics Times

"If you look at the history of Microsoft in the operating system business, you might conclude that the company doesn't like its own products. It always seems to be saying it has some new operating system that will solve the problems of whatever it is selling at the time. Now that Microsoft is selling Windows 95, it has two other operating systems it thinks are better: Windows NT and Windows CE. NT is better because it won't fail as often. CE is better because you don't have to invest as much in hardware for it to be useful."

-STEWART ALSOP, Fortune Magazine

"The reason we come up with new versions is not to fix bugs. It's absolutely not. It's the stupidest reason to buy a new version I ever heard."

-BILL GATES

"There is a fantasy in Redmond that Microsoft products are innovative, but this is based entirely on a peculiar confusion of the words 'innovative' and 'successful.' Microsoft products are successful -- they make a lot of money -- but that doesn't make them innovative, or even particularly good."

-ROBERT X. CRINGELY

"Focus: 'But there are bugs in any version which people would really like to have fixed.'

Gates: 'No! There are no significant bugs in our released software that any significant number of users want fixed. ... Maybe you're not using it properly.'"

-Focus Magazine, 10/23/95

"How did you make the most technically unsuccessful product to be the biggest marketing success?"

-A student to Bill Gates

"The ever-growing size of software applications is what makes Moore's Law possible: 'If we hadn't brought your computer to its knees, why would you go out and buy a new one?'"

-NATHAN MYHRVOLD, Group VP, Microsoft

"I've never installed a major upgrade of any Microsoft product without running into major headaches."

-BRIAN LIVINGSTON, InfoWorld Magazine

"One of the biggest disappointments of 1996 was Windows 95. Though it was hyped s a 32-bit powerhouse, many companies simply ignored it and stayed with Windows 3.1. And who could blame them? Plug and Play is often plug and pray. Despite Microsoft's protestations to the contrary, Windows 95 does require more RAM. Those nifty 3D graphics drivers have yet to materialize, and to make matters worse, Windows 95 often runs slower than a comparable Windows 3.1 system. And 32 bit or not, it still crashes. A lot."

-CNet, Clunker Of The Year Awards 1996

"My personal gripe is Windows 95's pitiful support of TCP/IP. For all the noise that Microsoft has been making about the global connectedness of everything, it's not working very well. Almost any error condition on the connection results in having to restart the machine. Windows 95 puts on a brave face of keeping everything running, but in fact has been mortally wounded. Errors compound, long delays creep into applications, and things generally start falling apart. The correct response to any TCP problem, especially a lost connection, is to shut down all applications and reboot. A combination of bugs and clunky features makes work that should be easy painful and slow."

-BILL MACHRONE, PCWorld, September 23 1996

"You think it's a conspiracy by the networks to put bad shows on TV. But the shows are bad because that's what people want. It's not like Windows users don't have any power. I think they are happy with Windows, and that's an incredibly depressing thought."

-STEVE JOBS

"The manual stinks, you don't have time to read a book, the help files are full of holes, the 'inside journal' you got by sending in the card Microsoft jammed in the Office box was just about as interesting as a VCR manual, and every training video you've ever seen was BORING!"

-TipWorld

"The programs that come bundled with new computers can be valuable. The software provided with new Macs, for example, is consistently good. But all too often on Windows machines, what you get is a collection of outdated programs or limited 'special editions' that are come-ons for you to pay for upgraded versions."

-Business Week, March 11 1996

"Windows 95 is merely a spiffed up version of the same old DOS and Windows ... Windows 95's incremental capabilities, like the new GUI and support for Win32 applications, have been, in effect, grafted onto those ancient DOS/Win3.x roots."

-Marketing Computers, February 1995

"If you don't know what you need Windows NT for, you don't need it."

-BILL GATES

"I still think that tens of millions of PC owners needlessly use a computer that is far less good than it should be."

-STEVE JOBS

"I totally agree that Microsoft products are not the best products."

-PRASANNA R. PRABHU, Microsoft [Click here for the full text.]

"Microsoft netted around $4 billion from OS sales last year -- you'd think they could spend a few bucks fixing it all. But it's more likely that O.J. will nab the real killer on the back nine at Pebble Beach than that Microsoft will voluntarily banish the heartache it puts users through."

-PAUL SOMERSON, PC Computing

"Microsoft bought MS-DOS from a Seattle company, and it was called QDOS then (Quick and Dirty Operating System). Some say it is not quick anymore, but the rest stays the same."

-WILSON ROBERTO AFONSO

"The time humanity loses waiting for Windows to boot must be in the thousands of person-years per year."

-MARK L. VAN NAME and BILL CATCHINGS, PC Week

"Microsoft Corp. claims that Windows 95 is a monolithic operating system that doesn't require DOS, but it doesn't take a software wizard to tell that it's really booting a perfectly usable, character-oriented version of DOS before it starts the GUI."

-BRETT GLASS, InfoWorld, October 23 1995

"... We finally finished installing the new servers. For performance reasons, we decided to drop Microsoft Windows NT and return to Unix again. We did this while we were still on the temporary server and even that machine which was a Pentium-90 with only 32mb RAM out-performed the NT Server that was a Pentium-200MMX with 96mb RAM. Needless to say, if we were not sure about the move before then, we were afterwards."

-GAME SITES NETWORK WEB SITE NEWS, November 22 1997

"I wish Microsoft would spend more time fixing some of the glaring problems with Windows and less time throwing its weight around. For example, try shift-clicking to select a bunch (but not all) of the icons in a folder. It doesn't work properly in either Windows NT or Windows 95 (it works perfectly on a Mac), and my guess is, it never will."

-NICHOLAS BARAN, Editor-in-chief, Windows NT Systems magazine

"I wonder if in part why so many people are angry at Microsoft is not just because their products frustrate them so much, but also because this frustration is ignored. The computer makes people feel like they are dummies, when in fact it is the computer that is stupid."

-ROSALIND PICARD, Development Professor of Computers and Communication, NEC and Associate Professor of Media Technology, MIT

"We build confusing systems. That's true in the software and true in the hardware. The number of questions that we get on our support lines imply that we together haven't done a very good job. The questions I get from my mother imply we haven't done a very good job.

"Systems don't function out of the box. We actually did a few surveys where we went and bought systems, and we were surprised at how many, you plug them in and they actually didn't work. That's going to give us all a very bad reputation.

"If you upgrade the software or hardware, it's way too difficult."

-JIM ALLCHIN, Senior Vice President, Microsoft

"If you look at Microsoft's successes over the years they have been rarely done by innovation. They bought DOS, they copied effectively a lot of what was in the Macintosh into Windows. In fact, Windows has gotten to look a lot more like that in 95 and 98. Windows NT is basically being built by the guy that built the VAX/VMS operating system. It is an Intel-based implementation of VMS. So where is the innovation? The innovation is the talking paper clip in Microsoft Office. Is that real innovation?"

-MITCHELL KERTZMAN, Chairman and CEO, Sybase

"Here's the worst part of what is happening: Because of the still unstable aspect of [Windows], the only people who can use computers and be sure they won't crash are those who buy factory-installed systems running something like Microsoft Works and never upgrade or add third-party software. For all practical purposes, this open system of ours has become proprietary. Proprietary to Microsoft."

-JOHN DVORAK, PC Magazine

"... Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates called Windows 98 'a major software innovation' and declared that 'any government action that would derail or delay Windows 98 would hurt the American economy.'

"Whoa! That grandiose description, like the most rabid charges of the critics, doesn't jibe with what I've observed in testing a prerelease version of Windows 98 every day for about a month now. So far, it's fine, but it hasn't changed my computing experience dramatically, for better or worse. As for the economic impact of Windows 98, all I can say is that Microsoft itself has delayed its release for months, and bread lines haven't appeared ..."

-WALTER MOSSBERG, Wall Street Journal

"The real problem for consumers is the bug-ridden nature of Windows 95 -- most shamelessly the update version, which has not had a single bug fix since the day it was released. Now that's a real problem for the nation's economic productivity."

-STEPHEN MANES, InformationWeek

"Microsoft's No. 1 product is Windows, which now comes automatically installed on every computer in the world and many kitchen appliances. Technically, Windows is an "operating system," which means that it supplies your computer with the basic commands that it needs to suddenly, with no warning whatsoever, stop operating.

"I speak from experience here. Many a time I have spent hours writing a serious and thoughtful column on an important issue, only to have Windows -- which is often referred to as 'the French labor union of software' -- get into a snit and call a general computer strike that erases all my work moments before deadline, leaving me with no choice but to bang out a highly inaccurate column such as this one."

-DAVE BARRY, Mercury Center [Click here for the full text.]

"Anyone who's surprised at delays in Microsoft's shipping schedule hasn't been awake for the past few years."

-DWIGHT DAVID, Summit Strategies

"Despite three years of development, [Windows 98] is not a major upgrade, it's a collection of bug-fixes and other bits most companies would offer for free as part of regular maintenance ... Microsoft is fond of saying its products provide innovations to the consumer, but that claim certainly doesn't apply to Windows 98. It may be slightly faster than Windows 95, but things like better plug and play support aren't innovative -- they're Microsoft's belated attempt to keep up with the rest of the market.

"Over the years, Apple, Amiga, IBM and others have been giving away minor operating system upgrades. But Microsoft is using its dominance of the operating system market to gouge consumers."

-RICHARD DEAN, National Public Radio

"Some analysts say Microsoft's gross margins on Windows 98 are as high as 92%. Why do they charge so much? Because they can. ... The truth is, Microsoft doesn't really care about Windows 98 -- it's focused on building its next generation operating system, called Windows NT. And guess what? It contains few true innovations, and it's more than twice the price of Windows 98.

...

"Windows 98 should have been released for free on January 1, 1996 and titled Windows 95.1. If this were Hollywood, then Windows 98 would be the equivalent of "Heaven's Gate," "Waterworld" and "Godzilla" rolled into one. A huge, overhyped, bloated embarrassment."

-JESSE BERT, AnchorDesk, ZDNet [Click here for the full text.]

"It is a rare case that I would ever have to reboot a Mac server because it ceased functioning or froze up; the PCs, on the other hand, keep me gainfully employed."

-PETER VISEL, Information Systems Manager, Santa Cruz Biotechnology

"That's right, friends and neighbors, Windows 98 brings us the ultimate Mac -- the True Mac [editor's note: not really]. ... And what does Gates call copying the Apple Menu with the Start button; the Mac folders with Windows folders; the mouse/keyboard wiring...? He calls it innovation."

-JAMES COATES, Chicago Tribune

"My problem is, I'm forced to upgrade all the time -- not for functionality I want, but for features someone [at Microsoft] wanted for me. I need to stay current, though, to get good [technical] support. We're rats on a treadmill. [Microsoft is] working in the best interest of Microsoft, and I don't think they listen to users."

-ROGER WALTERS, CIO, Booz Allen & Hamilton, Inc.

"... I cannot call Microsoft an innovative company. Can you name a single category of product it created? DOS was originally QDOS, Xerox invented the idea of Windows, which Apple perfected, and you can go right on down the line. Microsoft buys or copies (poorly) technology from smaller companies. The smaller company is always killed after the deal. Microsoft's only innovation is in contracts that lock people into its products or let Microsoft use its technology. Bill Gates is from a family of high-powered corporate lawyers, not engineers."

-JOE CELKO, Columnist, DBMS, September 1998

"The most interesting, if strange, comments ... came from people who encountered trouble installing Windows 98, spent their valuable time troubleshooting the situation and finally declared how delighted they were with the product.

"That baffles me. Then again, I'm surprised that people find it reasonable to spend hours installing a scanner or other peripheral gear that creates weird conflicts with other equipment or just plain doesn't work. I'm amazed when consumers put up with horrible bugs. And I'm perplexed when people flock to buy and use products that Albert Einstein would find difficult to use."

-DAN GILMOR, San Jose Mercury-News

"Then there is the word innovation. A key word, it's showing up too often in too many places in association with Microsoft and Windows 98. Obviously, the Microsoft spin doctors are trying to associate the word innovation with Windows 98 in the minds of the public. This is cute, since there is very little innovation in Windows 98. Everything in the OS is either a geegaw, a bug fix, or some new support, such as that for USB."

-JOHN DVORAK, PC Magazine

"Microsoft says Windows 98 fixes almost 3,000 bugs, but that begs the question of why those bugs were there in the first place."

-MICHAEL MILLER, PC Magazine

"Windows is an utter kludge, the ultimate tar baby, sucking you in, making things harder and harder, until you are hopelessly snagged and stuck, exhausted from fighting with it, resigned to despair. It is an inscrutable, god-awful mess, a disaster waiting to happen, a bonehead botch-job jammed with you-can't-get-there-from-here idiocy. They could train soldiers to kill by forcing them to struggle with this.

"It's bizarre that so many of us routinely put up with the crashes, the snarls, the unintuitive workarounds, the billions of hours wasted fumbling with broken systems, nursing along this crippled basket-case of an OS. Where is the outrage over so many lost hours of torment and unproductivity?"

-PAUL SOMERSON, PC Computing

"Windows 98 should have been released for free on Jan. 1, 1996 and titled Windows 95.1. If this were Hollywood, then Windows 98 would be the equivalent of 'Heaven's Gate', 'Waterworld' and 'Godzilla' rolled into one. A huge, overhyped, bloated, embarrassment."

-JESSE BERST, ZDNet

"Microsoft has gone from tying its products to tying the hands of its vendors"

-JOEL KLEIN, Assitant Antitrust Attorney General

"In biology, if the members of a herd are too genetically similar, a single disease can wipe them out. Ditto with computer systems: as Microsoft becomes increasingly dominant, the users of its programs are open to weaknesses that they may not know exist -- until it is too late ... if nothing else, the problems of macro-viruses have shown the weakness inherent in Microsoft's dominance of both business software and home PCs."

-CHARLES ARTHUR, The Independent (UK)

"Microsoft has sold just about every IT manager out there on Windows NT. Like a drug dealer who has a large and profitable clientele, Microsoft is hooked on making big money and hooked on their own poison called the Windows OS."

-JOHN MARTELLARO, Macopinion.com