04.12.10

Gemini version available ♊︎

Microsoft’s Handling of E-mail So Poor That It Might Get Dumped; Microsoft’s VLSC Broken for Months

Posted in Mail, Microsoft, Servers at 4:45 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

White rope

Summary: Microsoft’s business is hanging on the balance as reliability issues lead customers to exploring other options

OVER a year ago we assembled a few dozens of references about Microsoft's failure in E-mail. Exchange is a sure path to data loss, Hotmail is a nest of SPAM, and OneCare has deleted people’s entire mailboxes. These are just some of the many mail issues that we’ve covered here over the years.

According to this new report, Microsoft is in trouble after another major crash.

The crash resulted from a Microsoft server error that affected schools across the U.S., in the United Kingdom and Australia, Division of Information Technology Director Terry Robb said. The system has experienced delays and other issues this semester, sometimes leaving students unable to send or receive e-mail.

According to another new article, these crashes are a recurring problem.

In fall 2009, students switched to Microsoft Outlook Live for student Webmail. Not only was there a litany of problems during and shortly after students made the switch, but Webmail completely shut down this week.

Students couldn’t check their e-mail Monday evening or Tuesday morning due to problems with the Microsoft server. The server still had issues even after coming back online. Some students experienced delays with e-mail, and the e-mails of others were still offline.

Students faced a slowdown in e-mail delivery during February.

[...]

This week’s crash was absolutely unacceptable and will hopefully renew the discussion of switching. Although there were problems with the last switch, the Division of Information Technology and students will be better prepared for them after going through the issues once already. DoIT will be better prepared to curb problems with the switch and better guide students to do so.

Microsoft has become almost synonymous with serious reliability problems, a recent example of which being VLSC [1, 2]. It was down for about a month and is still not functioning properly. Mary Jo Foley seems to indicate that it has already lasted for several months and there is still no permanent solution.

Microsoft partners and customers who have been complaining for months about problems accessing their software due to problems with Microsoft’s Volume Licensing Service Center (VLSC), take heart. Microsoft is preparing to roll out a “version 3.5″ of the site, incorporating new fixes and updates, before the end of April.

As usual, Microsoft finds some external factors to blame. A classic example is Microsoft blaming BSoDs on “third parties” and blaming users for Windows Vista’s utter failure. Here we have Microsoft blaming plug-ins for the fact that Internet Explorer 8 is flaky [1, 2].

Add-ons account for more than 70 percent of browser crashes in Internet Explorer 8, according to Microsoft.

Microsoft used similar types of statistics to defend Vista. Rather than address practical issues it resorts to blame shifting. This is never a good sign.

Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Reddit
  • email

Decor ᶃ Gemini Space

Below is a Web proxy. We recommend getting a Gemini client/browser.

Black/white/grey bullet button This post is also available in Gemini over at this address (requires a Gemini client/browser to open).

Decor ✐ Cross-references

Black/white/grey bullet button Pages that cross-reference this one, if any exist, are listed below or will be listed below over time.

Decor ▢ Respond and Discuss

Black/white/grey bullet button If you liked this post, consider subscribing to the RSS feed or join us now at the IRC channels.

2 Comments

  1. your_friend said,

    April 12, 2010 at 9:09 am

    Gravatar

    Hotmail is more than a nest of spam, it is a Microsoft case study in how BSD is cheaper and more reliable than Microsoft’s “dog food” even when Microsoft software costs nothing to deploy. Microsoft, supposedly, was never able to move all of Hotmail’s services off BSD despite wasting years and billions of dollars. Besides the reliability problems of using Microsoft software, Microsoft also intentionally downgraded the interface for non Microsoft users and few people liked even the “better” version shown to Microsoft users so the service continues to lose users. Microsoft stagnated and ruined Hotmail while Gmail was busy offering users excellent threading, pop and imap download interfaces so that any client could be used, contact managment, more space and overall performance.

    Microsoft is doing similar things to Yahoo’s web mail right now. They have made interface changes that users hate and are loading it with even more advertisements. I must assume that the interface changes are also designed to discriminate against people who use anything but Microsoft software but Yahoo’s webmail has always been feature poor next to Gmail.

    For about a year, I’ve been forced to use Outlook at work and can say that it is the worst email client available. It does not thread well, so users are forced to look at things in chronological order. It is still based on an all in one pst database file, so performance is slow at best and it will still blow up when it gets to a file size greater than Microsoft’s primitive and flaky file systems allow. Contact auto complete is based only on email spelling, not names, so you have to type your contact’s leet aol name for the service to grab it. “Fred Baker” for example does not complete on “Ba…” or “Fr…”, only on whatever the email address is, which might be something silly like “mountaingoat@msn.com” IIS lookups are also lacking, by only being able to look things up by last name. Worst of all, Outlook wants to use other pathetically insecure Microsoft programs like IE and Word and so pulls problems from a 30 year old code base that was never intended for networking into email.

    Free software users easily and quickly forget how limiting and sorry Microsoft software really is. It is shocking how stagnant the company is. The problems cited more than ten years ago for the Hotmail migration are still valid and Microsoft has made things worse by concentrating on dirty tricks instead of improving their software.

    Dr. Roy Schestowitz Reply:

    It is still based on an all in one pst database file, so performance is slow at best and it will still blow up when it gets to a file size greater than Microsoft’s primitive and flaky file systems allow.

    Last week I spoke to a friend whose Outlook mailbox got ‘nuked’ when he upgraded Office. He needed to restore from backup.

DecorWhat Else is New


  1. Links 23/03/2023: RSS Guard 4.3.3 and OpenBSD Webzine

    Links for the day



  2. Experiencing 15 Years of LibrePlanet Celebration Firsthand as a Volunteer: 2023 - Charting the Course

    Article by Marcia K Wilbur



  3. [Meme] Grabinski the Opportunity

    Reports of European Patents being invalidated (judges do not tolerate fake patents) have become so common that a kangaroo court becomes a matter of urgency for the EPO‘s Benoît Battistelli and António Campinos; will the EU and the EPO’s Administrative Council go along with it, helping to cover up more than a decade of profound corruption?



  4. Union Syndicale Fédérale Cautions the EPO's Administrative Council About Initiating an Illegal Kangaroo Court System for Patents (UPC) While EPO Breaks Laws and Sponsors the Ukraine Invasion

    Union Syndicale Fédérale (USF) is once again speaking out in support of the staff union of Europe's second-largest institution, which lacks oversight and governance because of profound corruption and regulatory capture



  5. Investigation Underway: Sirius 'Open Source' Embezzled/Stole Money, Robbed Its Own Staff

    In light of new developments and some progress in an investigation of Sirius ‘Open Source’ (for fraud!) we take stock of where things stand



  6. [Meme] Sirius 'Open Source' Pensions: Schemes or Scams? Giving a Bad Name to Open Source...

    What Sirius ‘Open Source’ did to its staff is rightly treated as a criminal matter; we know who the perpetrators are



  7. Sirius 'Open Source' Under Investigation for Pension Fraud, Several Pension Providers Examine the Facts

    2 pension providers are looking into Sirius ‘Open Source’, a company that defrauded its own staff; stay tuned as there’s lots more to come. Is this good representation for “Open Source”? From a company that had many high-profile clients in the public sector?



  8. Links 23/03/2023: Sparky 2023.03 Special Editions and SUSE Changes CEO (Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen)

    Links for the day



  9. Links 23/03/2023: Linux 6.2.8 and XWayland 23.1.0

    Links for the day



  10. IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, March 22, 2023

    IRC logs for Wednesday, March 22, 2023



  11. Apple 'Porn' Filter

    Guest post by Ryan Farmer: Apple and US State Governments Developing System to Require People to Report Themselves for Watching Porn.



  12. 3.5 Years Later Gemini Protocol and Geminispace Are Still 100% Community-Controlled

    Community-centric alternatives to the World Wide Web have gained traction; one of them, Gemini Protocol, continues to grow in 2023 and we're pleased to report progress and expansion



  13. Windows Falls to 16% Market Share in India (It was 97% in 2009), Microsoft Layoffs Reach India Too

    This month’s picture from the world’s most populous nation does not look good for Microsoft (it looks good for GNU/Linux); anonymous rumour mills online say that Microsoft isn’t moving to India but is actually firing staff based in India, so it’s a case of shrinking, not offshoring. When even low-paid (much lower salaries) staff is discarded it means things are very gloomy.



  14. Links 22/03/2023: GNOME 44 “Kuala Lumpur”

    Links for the day



  15. Microsoft Has Also Infiltrated the OSI's Board of Directors After Rigged Elections

    Weeks ago we warned that this would happen and for the third or fourth time in 2 years the OSI’s election process broke down; today the Open Source Initiative (OSI) writes: “The polls just closed, the results are in. Congratulations to the returning directors Aeva Black…” (Microsoft employee)



  16. Links 22/03/2023: Official Thunderbird Podcast Starts

    Links for the day



  17. IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, March 21, 2023

    IRC logs for Tuesday, March 21, 2023



  18. Many More Microsoft Layoffs Later Today

    Yesterday we shared rumours about Microsoft layoffs being planned for later today (there were 3 waves of layoffs so far this year). There are several more people here who say the same. How much noise will Microsoft make in the “media” in order to distract? Will the chaffbot "ChatGPT" help create enough chaff?



  19. Links 21/03/2023: JDK 20 and GNOME 43.5

    Links for the day



  20. Germany's Lobbyists-Infested Government Sponsors the War on Ukraine via the European Patent Office (EPO)

    The chief UPC ‘judge’ is basically seeking to break the law (and violate constitutions, conventions etc.) to start a kangaroo court while dodging real courts, just like Vladimir Putin does



  21. [Meme] The Meme That Team UPC (the Collusion to Break the European Laws, for Profit) Threats to Sue Us For

    António Campinos and Team UPC are intimidating people who simply point out that the Unified Patent Court (UPC) is illegal and Klaus Grabinksi, shown above, strives to head a de facto kangaroo court in violation of constitutions and conventions (the UK does not and cannot ratify; Ireland hasn’t even held a referendum on the matter)



  22. Microsoft is Sacking People Every Month This Year, Even Managers (While Sponsored Media Produces Endless Chatbot Chaff)

    Lots of Microsoft layoffs lately and so-called ‘journalists’ aren’t reporting these; they’re too busy running sponsored puff pieces for Microsoft, usually fluff along the “hey hi” (AI) theme



  23. 3 Months Late Sirius 'Open Source' Finally Deletes Us From the Fraudulent 'Meet the Team' Page (But Still Lists Many People Who Left Years Ago!)

    Amid fraud investigations the management of Sirius ‘Open Source’ finally removed our names from its “Meet the Team” page (months late); but it left in the page about half a dozen people who left the company years ago, so it’s just lying to its clients about the current situation



  24. Amid Fraud at Sirius 'Open Source' CEO Deletes His Recent (This Month) Past With the Company

    Not only did the Sirius ‘Open Source’ CEO purge all mentions of Sirius from his Microsoft LinkedIn account; he’s racing against the clock as crimes quickly become a legal liability



  25. Web Survey Shows Microsoft Falling Below 15% Market Share in Africa, Only One Minuscule African Nation Has Windows Majority

    A Web survey that measured Microsoft Windows at 97% in Africa (back in 2010) says that Windows has become rather small and insignificant; the Microsoft-sponsored mainstream media seems to be ignoring this completely, quite likely by intention...



  26. Rumours of More Microsoft Layoffs Tomorrow (Including Managers!), Probably Azure Again (Many Azure Layoffs Every Year Since 2020)

    Amazon is laying off AWS staff and Microsoft has been laying off Azure staff for 3 years already, including this year, so it seems like the “clown computing” bubble is finally bursting



  27. [Meme] EPO's Management Brainstorm

    The story behind a misleading slogan told above



  28. The Photo Ops Festival of the Funky President António Campinos and Revolt From the Patent Examiners Whom He Perpetually Oppresses

    European Patents are being granted for no reason other than application and renewal fees, awarding European monopolies to companies that aren't even European (only about a third are actually European); staff of the EPO is fed up as it regards or views all this as an extreme departure from the EPO's mission (and it's also outright illegal)



  29. Links 21/03/2023: Trisquel GNU/Linux 11.0 LTS

    Links for the day



  30. Back Doors Proponent Microsoft Infiltrates Panels That Write the Security Regulations, Press Fails to Point Out the Obvious

    Cult tactics and classic entryism serve Microsoft again, stacking the panels and basically writing policy (CISA). As an associate explained it, citing this new example, Stanford “neglects to point out the obvious fact that Microsoft is writing its own regulations.”


RSS 64x64RSS Feed: subscribe to the RSS feed for regular updates

Home iconSite Wiki: You can improve this site by helping the extension of the site's content

Home iconSite Home: Background about the site and some key features in the front page

Chat iconIRC Channel: Come and chat with us in real time

Recent Posts