Summary: Microsoft's software and services leave customers nervous, angry, and impatient

YESTERDAY we mentioned the considerably long downtime of Microsoft's volume licensing websites. We argued that it lasted for over a week, but IDG argues that the problem persisted for over a month:

Ongoing problems with a Microsoft Web site handling software licenses have left some business customers unable to activate and use their Microsoft apps for more than a month.

That's why nobody gets fired for avoiding Microsoft. They are not reliable. As another brand new example, here is the major obstacle Office users are facing

It has been predicted Microsoft's Office 2010 will cause migration headaches, but for some, the pain is already here.

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Problems include having to rewrite and test old VBA Office macros because they won't work in Office 2007, file incompatibilities, major interface changes, and instances where Outlook won't work on different versions of Microsoft's Exchange Server.

And while Microsoft has documented known problems, customers have complained it's the undocumented stuff they are uncovering that's really tripping them up and where Microsoft is not being helpful.

Welcome to Microsoft -- where programs fail to function as advertised. But Microsoft wants to force you to use them anyway. ⬆

"Their [Microsoft] documents display a clear intent to monopolize, to prevent any competition from springing up. And they have used a variety of restrictive practices to prevent that kind of competition."

--Judge Robert Bork, former US Supreme Court nominee