Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!psuvax1!rutgers!att!whuts!mhuxh!mhuxu!mhuxt!mhuxi!mhuhk!mhuxo!ulysses!thumper!pff
From: pff@thumper.bellcore.com (Peter Ferris)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Microsoft cuts corners, actually
Message-ID: <1289@thumper.bellcore.com>
Date: 17 Aug 88 14:45:41 GMT
References: <7988@cup.portal.com> <5832@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> <9713@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU>
Reply-To: pff@thumper.UUCP (Peter Ferris)
Organization: Bellcore MRE
Lines: 33

Merlyn,
It's my understanding that Excel has been fixed so it no longer requires "the first MB of RAM".  I think you're really throwing the baby out with the bathwater
on this one.  To say Microsoft is writes "crappy" software is a pretty hard
statement.  On what do you base such a statement?  I want to see something
other than "... Excel needs
to be loaded in the first 1 meg of RAM to run (last I heard).
Their free MacroMaker was evaluated as "not worth it" by many netters
because it screws up.
".  Listen to yourself!  "... I heard", "...screws up".  This is supposed to
be a technical forum.  I'd welcome hearing your FIRST HAND experience with
Microsoft, not "a friend told me", or "I read this somewhere".  Further, I'd
like to know what Microsoft did or DIDN'T do to help you.  I have found them
to have one of the better product support groups in the industry.  Not perfect.
But very good.  If you think you can do better, then have at it!  Maybe you're
Bill Gates' successor in the industry.  Competition makes this country what 
it is.  
Merlyn, I don't want to dump on you, as an individual.  I don't know you.  I
can appreciate a person wanting to collect user feedback before forking over
hundreds for a "pig-in-a-poke" piece of software, but to come out of the 
woodwork and say "MICROSOFT TAKE SHORTCUTS" and begin character assasination
on a MAJOR vendor of software really isn't too cool (or factual or...).

Then again, Apple hasn't always perfectly documented every nuance of their
work either... I, too, have my suspicions.  Suffice it to repeat two funde-
mental laws of computing:
"Fallible men write fallible software..." (Are YOU Perfect?!)
"If carpenters built house like programmers write software, the first wood-pecker that comes along would destroy civilization."

Nothing personal, Merlyn... just can't let you squeak by on that blanket
statement about Microsoft!  Later...

Pete Ferris
pff@thumper.bellcore.com