I understand that you may treat customers well at MS, but why does it cost so much to get support? I live in UK and it costs about £2 a min to call MS support here.
As for yahoo. I agree that they are not be supportive, but 100MB free mailbox, compared to 1MB hotmail account speaks for itself.

I don't hate Microsoft. I think that most of the companies out there would have lost the plot like Microsoft has if they had been given the power and money that Microsoft has. I think that decent alternatives to MS products would do a lot to improve the general state of IT around the world as it would force them to improve their products. I also believe that standards should be open!! Imagine how rubbish the world would be if TCP\IP was proprietary. I am also worried about their NGSCB http://www.microsoft.com/resources/n...oductinfo.mspx technology. Could mean more consumer lock in and less freedom.

not for long
 

the hotmail free mailbox will be 200MB before too long.. i read a news post about it yesterday, before the whole "Gmail" email storage war started, most ppl didnt whine about the size of a free email. infact.. i used hotmail since before it was M$ so i just continue to use it. i dont like yahoo's mail interface near as much.. i've only had one bad encounter with M$ tech support (i work in a small IT department and all our stuff is M$) they had me on hold for almost 2 hours.. for a problem, i dont remember what it was.. but there wasn't much checking back at all, durring that time (could have been a new guy that didn't know customer service is important :giggle: ) anyway.. i'm not saying microsoft is evil, but they sure do have shady practices.. thats why i wont go back.. i dont like having to *cough* buy the newest software *cough* just because they dont support the older stuff anymore.

ya hotmail is being upgraded (thank fully), Microsoft will give you back the cost of your call if you ask them.

Fine I will stay on hold for six months, while Symnatec get their Norton Anti-Virus 2004 Pro to work on a Cyrix 686 CPU. Will I be refunded for the call? I doubt it.

If you have to pay long distance to Microsoft, Microsoft will refund your call. They do it all the time. WTF does Nortons awful Customer Service have to do with Microsoft?

You got a point. I just don't see why Microsoft do not include anti-virus software with their OS's? Make a deal with Symnatec to include Norton with Windows for instance. But, really my rant was at Symnatec, sorry.

Microsoft have bought out a company (can't remember the name!) that provides anti-virus software so I imagine they are planning to do something with it? My main problem with that is that Microsoft who have a very bad track record when it comes to security is probably not going to make very good anti-virus software. And I guess that some of the other companies that provide anti-virus software may go bang just like Netscape...etc.

lmao, do u guys not remember the anti-virus software they shipped with windows back in teh 3.0 days?

that what bloody awful and identified ligit programs as viral sometimes - used checksums to tell u if something was a virus