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Bill Gates tries to install Movie Maker
- __warlord__ 4y agoI would like to see a follow up... "Bill Gates tries to install Windows 11 with a local account".
- autotune 4y agoStep 1) Install Windows 10 Step 2) Wait for it to automatically upgrade when you least expect it.
- kleene_op 4y agoAh. A stochastic approach.
- arthurcolle 4y agoIt approaches 100% asymptotically, until one day it happens
- nequo 4y agoWindows 10 converges to Windows 11 almost surely.
- sn_master 4y agoThe only way I made that work is physically disconnecting the router from the power plug
- rayiner 4y agoI’m quite shocked Bill Gates’ email was so nice. Can you imagine if it had been Linus Torvalds or Steve Jobs? Maybe that explains how it got that way.
- midoridensha 4y agoI'm much more shocked about how poorly-written Bill's email is. He sounds like he's almost illiterate. Any random post here on HN is far better written and more understandable. How did this guy get where he is now? Anyway, his account sounds like a typical Windows user experience, especially from that time. I guess that shows the power of having a monopoly: users are forced to put up with it, no matter how awful it is.
- knaik94 4y agoNo one reads long emails. I similarly noticed that people don't miss things in my email when I format them like texts or discord messages. He wasn't writing up technical requirements for Moviemaker, he was just sharing his experiences. I also suspect that most people that are as busy as him mainly use their phone to access email. I know 90% of the time I've heard back from, who I consider, busy people, there was a "sent from my iphone" signature in the email footer.
- yywwbbn 4y agoNot sure the phone part was really true in 2003. Maybe he was using his iPAQ, though
- exotree 4y agoThis is pretty par for the course and the quality of writing largely makes sense, especially if you’re sending to an internal team of people you work with somewhat regularly. He just sent a pretty complex and in-depth walk thru of a terrible experience in probably about 15 or minutes or less (not including the time it took to actually go through this process).
- KingLancelot 4y ago[dead]
- pleb_nz 4y agoYou didn't understand what he was trying to communicate?
- jmkni 4y ago> Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up. This made me laugh out loud
- ncr100 4y agoIt's tragic his leadership was so ineffective.
- voytec 4y agoSounds a lot like downloading stuff from HP, too.
- julian_sark 4y agoI have recently bought a new PC, without a DVD drive, naturally. And tried to re-install my copy of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. This copy is a "pre order" DVD set I got off of eBay simply because it was a good price, but it's bound to my "Microsoft Account", the same account used in my Windows 11 install. I spent a good part of an hour trying to get this to install. The Microsoft store (also slow as **) didn't let me do it; it doesn't know of this edition nor my license. I eventually discovered that there is a web page somewhere deep on Microsoft.com, which has a download button, which (after three time-outs) opens a secret link into Microsoft Store which ONLY THEN lets me reinstall the product from the Microsoft Store. So I must admit I read that with great joy. Yeah Bill ... Karma! Somewhat unrelated: The icing on the cake, naturally, is that even a full digital install of the DVD edition of MS Flight Sim "requires" the DVD #1 to be in the drive. But since people don't HAVE physical DVD drives in 2020 and upwards, I use an ISO image. You can in fact make an ISO image with just a few tiny files from DVD #1 without the huge data files, that's sufficient. You'd think "oh yeah, copy protection" but there is NOTHING about this DVD image that is akin to any copy protection. It just wants these files as part of a drive (or mounted image), which I'm sure they could even detect the difference, as I'm even mounting it with built-in Windows Explorer functionality these days, without special software). I literally don't know why they would force me to present a (virtual) DVD if there is no other checks whatsoever. This makes no sense but to hurt customers. Somewhat more unrelated: Microsoft still owes me 20 bucks. I once bought a PC with a Windows XP to Vista upgrade coupon. The web site let me select Vista 64 bit, so I gave that a try. Alas, the XP shipped with the PC was 32 bit, so they simply never carried out the order. I called their customer support, where I was nearly chastised in very broken, hard to understand language for selecting the 64 bit version from the drop-down menu. They never carried out the order, and didn't refund my twenty bucks for S&H. Thank God for alternative software distribution methods back then that rhyme with "Pi rate day". Totally unrelated (really going of on a tangent of story telling now): Another company that still owes me roughly 20 bucks is Dell. I once ordered a server from them, and discovered that they had a catalog error. Adding the biggest, meanest CPU would not add money to the bill, but subtract several thousand dollars from the total. So using that trick, for some giggles, I configured a server to be around 20 bucks total and ordered it. I pre-paid the total amount. I didn't expect to get the server, of course, but I expected them to contact me and refund my money. Never heard from them.
- ryzvonusef 4y ago> So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated If you ever feel downcast about your skills, remember someone had the temerity to say this to Bill Gates.
- CamelRocketFish 4y agoI think Bill was being sarcastic
- scotty79 4y agoI think just paraphrased the response he got.
- kirykl 4y agoWould have been even better if he had called their general tech support line for assistance
- whywhywhywhy 4y agoThe replies say it all.
- eqvinox 4y agoI feel like exactly none of the people in the replies were able to understand the problem outside of the boundaries of their strictly delineated parcels of Microsoft they "own" :D
- cainxinth 4y agoOh they understood it, alright. That was just them jockeying to see who was going to have to deal with it.
- zaphodias 4y ago> These 45 names are totally confusing. These names make stuff like: C:\Documents and Settings\billg\My Documents\My Pictures seem clear. Almost forgot what paths on Windows look like lol
- doubled112 4y agoIt’s a lot to type and there are spaces. I am glad they switched to C:\Users\billg\Pictures
- WhyNotHugo 4y agoMissed opportunity to call it C:\Home\billg\Pictures (going for slash instead of backslash is too ambitious).
- lozenge 4y agoThey wanted to make sure every third party product could handle long paths and spaces in paths, otherwise it would have been C:\Users.
- ek9 4y agoA little irrelevant, but I smirked while reading this from one of the last email excerpts > But, if you want nothing revolutionary and want to band-aid (which is fine and understandable) then I agree with your plan to give it to Dave.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- chops 4y agoThis has the same energy as the opening of Joe Armstrong's (RIP, Joe) talk, The Mess We're In: https://youtu.be/lKXe3HUG2l4 https://youtu.be/lKXe3HUG2l4
- Kukumber 4y agoGlad to see nothing has changed, how pathetic
- mock-possum 4y agosoooo he's got a copy of windows that he never updates, and he's surprised when the latest versions of official microsoft software doesn't run on it? I mean - I'm not saying that's a good experience, or that it's one I am or would be happy about, but... it's not super reassuring to learn that Bill Gates is about as windows-literate as my own mother. :\