7 ms·

How do organisations justify so many lost hours of a day where employees just struggle with Microsoft’s abysmal software instead of doing real work.

pmontra 4y ago
Because they think that they must use Windows no matter how bad it is.
- philliphaydon 4y ago
  Windows is no more bad than macOS or any distro of linux.
  - blep_ 4y ago
    > At least my [...] Windows licenses are still working—but could the school revoke that access too? This, at least, is a thing I have never even had to consider as a remote possibility on Linux.
    - philliphaydon 4y ago
      Sure. But every OS has its flaws. They are all good and bad in their own way.
      - synecdoche 4y ago
        This statement says next to nothing but may give the impression that it does to anyone who doesn't think twice on what it actually says. OS X and OS Y both have their good and bad sides but not necessarily near similar in terms of features and execution. It's not an argument not should it be used as such.
        philliphaydon 4y ago
        Saying an OS is bad is offering nothing when it’s factually incorrect. It’s not an argument nor should it be used as such.
  - trinsic2 4y ago
    Microsoft's dark patterns philosophy and how that translates into real-world user experiences is the worst I have ever seen. And since they are implementing these dark patterns into the OS it has the potential to make using Windows very difficult. I understand that, with knowledge, you can get around that.. But I dont see why anyone would want to any more. Apple is really bad too, but there not as bad in the dark patterns market at least in the OS. But they are way strict with their walled garden approach to everything so I wont support them either. Linux can be buggy at times, but I feel much safer using this OS then I do Windows or MacOS because Microsoft and Apple don't really seem to care to much about the ramifications of their end-user hostile decisions.
    - katbyte 4y ago
      What are the ramifications of apples “end-user hostile decisions” aside from the walled garden on iOS? And having to click security -> run anyway for unsigned apps?
      - trinsic2 4y ago
        I think how their approach to usability and security actually translates to a lack of user-freedom. We had a discussion recently about activation lock on hackernews. On paper and in the world of security, its a great mechanism to prevent theft. But it also causes friction for device re-use with people that don't understand they need to decouple their online identity from their device, this has a negative impact on recycling. It also seems like Apple wants to herd people into purchasing new devices sooner than they should, when the should be doing all they can to make devices last. This is also related to trying to control the circulation of replacement parts by attempting to force independent repair centers to regulate how parts are distributed. Apple takes more of a "You don't know what you are doing, so we have to guide you in the right direction" approach that doesn't sit too well with me. Apple can be wrong, a lot, about how their decisions effects people's freedom to decide how to implement there own security and ways of retiring devices. Apple should be in the business of making hardware and making it usable. Not being a parent, deciding how people are going to use and secure their devices. Maybe leaving that to an impartial organization that works with apple. Too many conflicts of interest for me.
kissgyorgy 4y ago
"Because it's cheap." Lots of "leaders" don't see much further than that...
- out-of-ideas 4y ago
  this is true; they look at dollar amounts first and do not look at quality; repeated over and over by people .. and it feels nobody seems to even care.
- Karellen 4y ago
  If that were the reason, the year of Linux on the desktop would have happened 20 years ago.
  - kissgyorgy 4y ago
    Linux was not and is not cheap at all. Downloading it might be free, but the initial price doesn't matter compared the cost of running it for a whole organization.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
      We are literally in a threat complaining that the cost of Windows is wildly higher than the cost of buying a box copy of the software. So yeah, in this context Linux is free.
elsjaako 4y ago
They don't consider any alternative to be viable.
rejectfinite 4y ago
Because on your work computer you just login with your work office 365 and not your personal one and then the above is not a problem whatsoever?
ta1243 4y ago
Windows is only $5m a year and legal threats if your time is free
- exikyut 4y ago
  Wow, that's only $416k/mo. Which is like, wow, half a mil a month, but... also alarmingly little!~ Apparently the backward compatibility monster is not the size it used to be? Now I understand why Win11's designers used Macs... wow the moat got small
  - ta1243 4y ago
    Well depends on the size of the company and how much of the microsoft ecosystem you buy.
bboygravity 4y ago
The lost hours are totally invisible (most companies wouldn't even allow you to report them. they don't WANT to see them) and the alternative world without lost hours with more productivity can also not be imagined by those in charge. For all it's terrible bugs and login issues, is there even alterative with similar functionality that would be as "user friendly" (as in: non-tech people would know how to use it as well as they use Microsoft garbage?). I literally can't think of any alternatives that comes close in functionality OR has the same ease of use for non tech people and wouldn't waste even more time.
- hkt 4y ago
  OSX seems fine for most people where I've worked. For the truly intractable Windows addict, maybe ReactOS? https://reactos.org/ https://reactos.org/
  - notpushkin 4y ago
    I think Linux + Wine should be fine for most people (with a little guidance, of course). ReactOS isn't stable enough even in a VM right now – but the progress is nice, and I hope it will be a viable alternative for embedded applications (like ATMs or factory automation stuff). Maybe consumer use one day, too?
  - bboygravity 4y ago
    I don't see how that is related to what I wrote? Mac is not an alternative functionality to: Teams, Outlook, MS Office, etc? It doesn't solve the MS crappy auth system, it doesn't give (large) businesses the same functionality that MS is giving them.
    - danaris 4y ago
      On the Mac, you can use those MS products without it taking over your user account. You can also use any of various other products that compete with them (Google Apps, iWork, Zoom, etc). Just because MS makes a specific package that businesses like doesn't mean that they can't use something else if MS is becoming more of a problem than they're worth.
Stranger43 4y ago
Because nobody got fired for buying Microsoft. Enterprise IT is conservative and full of strange politics that make it really dangerous for an admin team or it department to stick their head out and do something independent other then follow the "mythical industry best practice" and MS is extremely good at manipulating what gets considered "industry best practice" to their advantage and then give just enough discount on the more visible parts of the costs to look cheaper. And it's a open secret that individual employee productivity don't matter all that much in the kind of back end work where a PC was ever a feasible tool, as what really counts for profitability is the non-pc using frontline staff's productivity, who is far more likely to be issued either no computers or mobile phones or tablet then wintel laptops.
tester756 4y ago
because it actually works you can try to find as many edge cases, but at the end of the day I just log into the account that's inside domain and everything: email, teams, network accesses, auth thru web apps goes thru that domain account
- TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
  Is moving a personal account to a different country an insanely obscure edge case? Because I tried to do that recently with O365 and I literally couldn't move my subscription without killing the old one and creating a new one. Every other software service I use somehow managed to make it easy: fill in the new billing details. Done. But not Microsoft. Billing and fulfilment details are on different pages, there's no obvious way to get from one to the other, and if you want to change country you can't. Superb.
  - alibarber 4y ago
    I have literally received (temporary) work visas for other countries, travelled, etc etc with greater ease than moving some online accounts I have (Apple). Even having physical copies of The Economist follow me, with the same subscription, was easier.
  - pbhjpbhj 4y ago
    Optimisation for maximising profit, yay!
steve1977 4y ago
Considering many of those employees are doing bullshit jobs, it probably doesn't really matter at the end of the day.
lostlogin 4y ago
I’m blown away by this. I’ve come back to a full MS stack after years away and it’s grim. Machine shave to be restarted once or more times per day. My personal MacBook is restarted every month or two. I used to moan about Apple’s software quality, but maybe we are actually in Isaac Asimov’s accelerating decline to a dark age.
- j_mo 4y ago
  Not to support Windows, but what are you doing that requires restarts multiple times per day? I leave my personal Windows 10 desktop running for about a month at a time so I don't have to reopen 5 different windows and arrange them across three screens for uni work every evening. It works fine. Mind you, if it was a Mac I'd not even have to reopen or arrange them after restarting the machine - they'd still be there. Although my work Mac loves to randomise which display gets which windows and desktop background... And randomly pan all bluetooth audio to the left ear once a week. I guess all OS's have their issues.
  - denton-scratch 4y ago
    > I leave my personal Windows 10 desktop running for about a month at a time My Win10 Home desktop downloads updates when I'm not looking - and sometimes when I'm actually using the thing - and then reboots all on its own. I have no control over this; there have been occasions when the reboot has happened while I was working. It happens roughly once a week.
    - InvaderFizz 4y ago
      I've been using this method for years and it works great. It uses a windows debug feature to launch cmd instead of the reboot scheduler. You never see the cmd window, as it's launched by SYSTEM. This prevents Windows update from scheduling a reboot, otherwise the system function as normal. You do need to reboot periodically, but now it's on your schedule. Source: https://lazyadmin.nl/it/how-to-stop-automatic-restart-win-10-after-installing-updates/#comments https://lazyadmin.nl/it/how-to-stop-automatic-restart-win-10...
    - 4y ago
r_hoods_ghost 4y ago
Because as someone who has done support for a 28000 person organisation, 27500 of which are using mostly Microsoft products on windows for 90% of the time and 500 of which are using Mac or Linux and doing other stuff I can tell you that at least 50% of the security incidents and second line support issues came from those 500 users.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  Did those 500 users also happen to be the ones that weren’t adequately supported because they were seen as problem children? If my org doesn’t give me a supported way to do absolutely necessary thing X, then I’ll find my own way to do it.
  - r_hoods_ghost 4y ago
    As I said they took up about 50% of the second line support capacity for the entire organisation. So yes they were properly supported, unless you want a dedicated tech to hold the hand of every exec, dev and bioinformatician.
    - Aeolun 4y ago
      While it is entirely possible the problem here is those execs, devs and bioinformaticians. There do seem to be many other common factors than the macs here. Maybe they all need nonstandard software? God forbid, maybe they need administration permissions, but the org doesn’t want to give it to them, so they end up calling in every other day to get something unlocked (I know that’d be true for me). Maybe it’s the problem solving skills of the IT team when it comes to mac, so people keep coming back with the same issues (good ones are Outlook/Teams being permanently broken, or VPN not connecting). On the whole, I’d steer away from any explanation that would require all 500 mac users to be idiots.
    - bjelkeman-again 4y ago
      Or the technical infrastructure doesn’t support them well. Or the support team doesn’t know MacOS or Linux, so it becomes a lot harder to provide support. There could be many reasons.
SturgeonsLaw 4y ago
Try and talk the C-suite and Accounts people at $NonTechBusiness into using LibreOffice or Google Docs instead of Excel and Outlook and let me know how you go.
Meph504 4y ago
Have you tried the competing software in a business environment, it is pretty easy to see why MS productivity software dominates. For like $12/u/month you get full web and desktop office software, MFA, and AzureAD, which you can use as a SSO indentity provider for free, for one lisc that cost $4/m you can then make use of conditional access policies that give you massive options over how you manage an access all aspects of the tenant. They now are giving teams (slack knockoff) a free dialing number so it now can be used for phone conferencing without non-organizational people. Onedrive gives you 1Tb of syncable storage per user, and 1TB per user pool for shared office resources. I spent years as a google apps advocate, but seriously for the money, no one touchs what MS is offering right now. Google had MS hands down 10 years ago, and let google apps die on the vine. It is a damn shame too, because they were the only ones that have anything comparable.
- literalAardvark 4y ago
  And they're about to introduce GPT3/4 text generation into their products... And possibly image generation because why not. It's just too good to ignore.
- Joeri 4y ago
  Having just been put through the switch from google apps + slack to the full ms365 suite including teams I have to agree and disagree. On paper microsoft absolutely has the best offering. The ms365 suite has everything anyone could ever need. But, in practice it feels more like a downgrade than an upgrade. Teams does everything, and all of it just as poorly. Office does everything, but the web version and collaboration features are so far behind google they are not comparable. Sharepoint and onedrive seem superior to google drive, but in practice there are many papercuts and people struggle to understand where to put documents and how to properly share them. What microsoft seems to lack is caring about user experience as they slather feature layer after feature layer on top of their products. What google seems to lack is incentive to actually meaningfully improve their product, because I couldn‘t tell you a single meaningful feature they added to g suite over the last five years.
  - theK 4y ago

pmontra 4y ago

Because they think that they must use Windows no matter how bad it is.

philliphaydon 4y ago
Windows is no more bad than macOS or any distro of linux.
- blep_ 4y ago
  > At least my [...] Windows licenses are still working—but could the school revoke that access too? This, at least, is a thing I have never even had to consider as a remote possibility on Linux.
  - philliphaydon 4y ago
    Sure. But every OS has its flaws. They are all good and bad in their own way.
    - synecdoche 4y ago
      This statement says next to nothing but may give the impression that it does to anyone who doesn't think twice on what it actually says. OS X and OS Y both have their good and bad sides but not necessarily near similar in terms of features and execution. It's not an argument not should it be used as such.
      - philliphaydon 4y ago
        Saying an OS is bad is offering nothing when it’s factually incorrect. It’s not an argument nor should it be used as such.
- trinsic2 4y ago
  Microsoft's dark patterns philosophy and how that translates into real-world user experiences is the worst I have ever seen. And since they are implementing these dark patterns into the OS it has the potential to make using Windows very difficult. I understand that, with knowledge, you can get around that.. But I dont see why anyone would want to any more. Apple is really bad too, but there not as bad in the dark patterns market at least in the OS. But they are way strict with their walled garden approach to everything so I wont support them either. Linux can be buggy at times, but I feel much safer using this OS then I do Windows or MacOS because Microsoft and Apple don't really seem to care to much about the ramifications of their end-user hostile decisions.
  - katbyte 4y ago
    What are the ramifications of apples “end-user hostile decisions” aside from the walled garden on iOS? And having to click security -> run anyway for unsigned apps?
    - trinsic2 4y ago
      I think how their approach to usability and security actually translates to a lack of user-freedom. We had a discussion recently about activation lock on hackernews. On paper and in the world of security, its a great mechanism to prevent theft. But it also causes friction for device re-use with people that don't understand they need to decouple their online identity from their device, this has a negative impact on recycling. It also seems like Apple wants to herd people into purchasing new devices sooner than they should, when the should be doing all they can to make devices last. This is also related to trying to control the circulation of replacement parts by attempting to force independent repair centers to regulate how parts are distributed. Apple takes more of a "You don't know what you are doing, so we have to guide you in the right direction" approach that doesn't sit too well with me. Apple can be wrong, a lot, about how their decisions effects people's freedom to decide how to implement there own security and ways of retiring devices. Apple should be in the business of making hardware and making it usable. Not being a parent, deciding how people are going to use and secure their devices. Maybe leaving that to an impartial organization that works with apple. Too many conflicts of interest for me.

kissgyorgy 4y ago

"Because it's cheap." Lots of "leaders" don't see much further than that...

out-of-ideas 4y ago
this is true; they look at dollar amounts first and do not look at quality; repeated over and over by people .. and it feels nobody seems to even care.
Karellen 4y ago
If that were the reason, the year of Linux on the desktop would have happened 20 years ago.
- kissgyorgy 4y ago
  Linux was not and is not cheap at all. Downloading it might be free, but the initial price doesn't matter compared the cost of running it for a whole organization.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
    We are literally in a threat complaining that the cost of Windows is wildly higher than the cost of buying a box copy of the software. So yeah, in this context Linux is free.

elsjaako 4y ago

They don't consider any alternative to be viable.

rejectfinite 4y ago

Because on your work computer you just login with your work office 365 and not your personal one and then the above is not a problem whatsoever?

ta1243 4y ago

Windows is only $5m a year and legal threats if your time is free

exikyut 4y ago
Wow, that's only $416k/mo. Which is like, wow, half a mil a month, but... also alarmingly little!~ Apparently the backward compatibility monster is not the size it used to be? Now I understand why Win11's designers used Macs... wow the moat got small
- ta1243 4y ago
  Well depends on the size of the company and how much of the microsoft ecosystem you buy.

bboygravity 4y ago

The lost hours are totally invisible (most companies wouldn't even allow you to report them. they don't WANT to see them) and the alternative world without lost hours with more productivity can also not be imagined by those in charge. For all it's terrible bugs and login issues, is there even alterative with similar functionality that would be as "user friendly" (as in: non-tech people would know how to use it as well as they use Microsoft garbage?). I literally can't think of any alternatives that comes close in functionality OR has the same ease of use for non tech people and wouldn't waste even more time.

hkt 4y ago
OSX seems fine for most people where I've worked. For the truly intractable Windows addict, maybe ReactOS? https://reactos.org/ https://reactos.org/
- notpushkin 4y ago
  I think Linux + Wine should be fine for most people (with a little guidance, of course). ReactOS isn't stable enough even in a VM right now – but the progress is nice, and I hope it will be a viable alternative for embedded applications (like ATMs or factory automation stuff). Maybe consumer use one day, too?
- bboygravity 4y ago
  I don't see how that is related to what I wrote? Mac is not an alternative functionality to: Teams, Outlook, MS Office, etc? It doesn't solve the MS crappy auth system, it doesn't give (large) businesses the same functionality that MS is giving them.
  - danaris 4y ago
    On the Mac, you can use those MS products without it taking over your user account. You can also use any of various other products that compete with them (Google Apps, iWork, Zoom, etc). Just because MS makes a specific package that businesses like doesn't mean that they can't use something else if MS is becoming more of a problem than they're worth.

Stranger43 4y ago

Because nobody got fired for buying Microsoft. Enterprise IT is conservative and full of strange politics that make it really dangerous for an admin team or it department to stick their head out and do something independent other then follow the "mythical industry best practice" and MS is extremely good at manipulating what gets considered "industry best practice" to their advantage and then give just enough discount on the more visible parts of the costs to look cheaper. And it's a open secret that individual employee productivity don't matter all that much in the kind of back end work where a PC was ever a feasible tool, as what really counts for profitability is the non-pc using frontline staff's productivity, who is far more likely to be issued either no computers or mobile phones or tablet then wintel laptops.

tester756 4y ago

because it actually works you can try to find as many edge cases, but at the end of the day I just log into the account that's inside domain and everything: email, teams, network accesses, auth thru web apps goes thru that domain account

TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
Is moving a personal account to a different country an insanely obscure edge case? Because I tried to do that recently with O365 and I literally couldn't move my subscription without killing the old one and creating a new one. Every other software service I use somehow managed to make it easy: fill in the new billing details. Done. But not Microsoft. Billing and fulfilment details are on different pages, there's no obvious way to get from one to the other, and if you want to change country you can't. Superb.
- alibarber 4y ago
  I have literally received (temporary) work visas for other countries, travelled, etc etc with greater ease than moving some online accounts I have (Apple). Even having physical copies of The Economist follow me, with the same subscription, was easier.
- pbhjpbhj 4y ago
  Optimisation for maximising profit, yay!

steve1977 4y ago

Considering many of those employees are doing bullshit jobs, it probably doesn't really matter at the end of the day.

lostlogin 4y ago

I’m blown away by this. I’ve come back to a full MS stack after years away and it’s grim. Machine shave to be restarted once or more times per day. My personal MacBook is restarted every month or two. I used to moan about Apple’s software quality, but maybe we are actually in Isaac Asimov’s accelerating decline to a dark age.

j_mo 4y ago
Not to support Windows, but what are you doing that requires restarts multiple times per day? I leave my personal Windows 10 desktop running for about a month at a time so I don't have to reopen 5 different windows and arrange them across three screens for uni work every evening. It works fine. Mind you, if it was a Mac I'd not even have to reopen or arrange them after restarting the machine - they'd still be there. Although my work Mac loves to randomise which display gets which windows and desktop background... And randomly pan all bluetooth audio to the left ear once a week. I guess all OS's have their issues.
- denton-scratch 4y ago
  > I leave my personal Windows 10 desktop running for about a month at a time My Win10 Home desktop downloads updates when I'm not looking - and sometimes when I'm actually using the thing - and then reboots all on its own. I have no control over this; there have been occasions when the reboot has happened while I was working. It happens roughly once a week.
  - InvaderFizz 4y ago
    I've been using this method for years and it works great. It uses a windows debug feature to launch cmd instead of the reboot scheduler. You never see the cmd window, as it's launched by SYSTEM. This prevents Windows update from scheduling a reboot, otherwise the system function as normal. You do need to reboot periodically, but now it's on your schedule. Source: https://lazyadmin.nl/it/how-to-stop-automatic-restart-win-10-after-installing-updates/#comments https://lazyadmin.nl/it/how-to-stop-automatic-restart-win-10...
  - 4y ago

r_hoods_ghost 4y ago

Because as someone who has done support for a 28000 person organisation, 27500 of which are using mostly Microsoft products on windows for 90% of the time and 500 of which are using Mac or Linux and doing other stuff I can tell you that at least 50% of the security incidents and second line support issues came from those 500 users.

Aeolun 4y ago
Did those 500 users also happen to be the ones that weren’t adequately supported because they were seen as problem children? If my org doesn’t give me a supported way to do absolutely necessary thing X, then I’ll find my own way to do it.
- r_hoods_ghost 4y ago
  As I said they took up about 50% of the second line support capacity for the entire organisation. So yes they were properly supported, unless you want a dedicated tech to hold the hand of every exec, dev and bioinformatician.
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    While it is entirely possible the problem here is those execs, devs and bioinformaticians. There do seem to be many other common factors than the macs here. Maybe they all need nonstandard software? God forbid, maybe they need administration permissions, but the org doesn’t want to give it to them, so they end up calling in every other day to get something unlocked (I know that’d be true for me). Maybe it’s the problem solving skills of the IT team when it comes to mac, so people keep coming back with the same issues (good ones are Outlook/Teams being permanently broken, or VPN not connecting). On the whole, I’d steer away from any explanation that would require all 500 mac users to be idiots.
  - bjelkeman-again 4y ago
    Or the technical infrastructure doesn’t support them well. Or the support team doesn’t know MacOS or Linux, so it becomes a lot harder to provide support. There could be many reasons.

SturgeonsLaw 4y ago

Try and talk the C-suite and Accounts people at $NonTechBusiness into using LibreOffice or Google Docs instead of Excel and Outlook and let me know how you go.

Meph504 4y ago

Have you tried the competing software in a business environment, it is pretty easy to see why MS productivity software dominates. For like $12/u/month you get full web and desktop office software, MFA, and AzureAD, which you can use as a SSO indentity provider for free, for one lisc that cost $4/m you can then make use of conditional access policies that give you massive options over how you manage an access all aspects of the tenant. They now are giving teams (slack knockoff) a free dialing number so it now can be used for phone conferencing without non-organizational people. Onedrive gives you 1Tb of syncable storage per user, and 1TB per user pool for shared office resources. I spent years as a google apps advocate, but seriously for the money, no one touchs what MS is offering right now. Google had MS hands down 10 years ago, and let google apps die on the vine. It is a damn shame too, because they were the only ones that have anything comparable.

literalAardvark 4y ago
And they're about to introduce GPT3/4 text generation into their products... And possibly image generation because why not. It's just too good to ignore.
Joeri 4y ago
Having just been put through the switch from google apps + slack to the full ms365 suite including teams I have to agree and disagree. On paper microsoft absolutely has the best offering. The ms365 suite has everything anyone could ever need. But, in practice it feels more like a downgrade than an upgrade. Teams does everything, and all of it just as poorly. Office does everything, but the web version and collaboration features are so far behind google they are not comparable. Sharepoint and onedrive seem superior to google drive, but in practice there are many papercuts and people struggle to understand where to put documents and how to properly share them. What microsoft seems to lack is caring about user experience as they slather feature layer after feature layer on top of their products. What google seems to lack is incentive to actually meaningfully improve their product, because I couldn‘t tell you a single meaningful feature they added to g suite over the last five years.
- theK 4y ago