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I think this sort-of touches the core issue, but not quite.

To me, it comes down to how Surface fits into Microsoft’s overall product mix.  Not counting what they’re doing with peripherals or XBox, Microsoft is still a software company, and their view of the world is that they are producing Windows systems, and outsourcing the hardware to other vendors.

Some of it may be related to the issue of myriad of hardware combinations available, and that’s not trivial.  However, my impression of  Surface is that it belongs predominantly to the marketing people, and where their vision of Surface is more similar to what Google is doing with Pixel — as an example of the state-of-the-art of Microsoft offerings, and what they want other manufacturers to emulate.  That’s very much in line with the “windows as a service” and short life cycles of Windows semi-annual releases, where the trailing edge is pretty recent, and where developers can’t ignore new features and capacities for long, using the excuse “nobody has that feature”.

For Microsoft, I’m convinced that the customers that they’re selling Surface to are predominantly not end-users, but the major manufacturers, as a way of getting them to implement Microsoft’s vision.   In that perspective, what comes out the door *is* the finished product, and it’s not entirely surprising that commitment to ongoing support lags.  If Marketing owns the product, they’re focused on the user experience out of the box, and by the time that support issues come along, they have already moved on to the Next Big Thing, and pretty indifferent about supporting (or providing resources for support)  what’s already been sold.

I have a mix of stuff: Pro and Home, as well as physical and virtual.  So far, I’ve seen 2004 offered on one machine running 1909 Home, as well as in a virtual machine running 1909 Pro (although the machine it’s hosted on is not getting an offer of 2004). One other 1909 Pro which was upgraded from Win 7 is not yet seeing offers.

There’s two different kinds of refurbished. One is “nearly new” stuff, including open-box returns, cosmetic flaws, etc.  The other is stuff that is truly used, often off-lease machines that have 3 or 4 years of accumulated use in them.

Terminology varies widely, and it’s essential to get a precise description of what you get (or not), from “refurbished”, “reconditioned”, “remanufactured”, etc. For stuff that’s “nearly new”, that generally going to be coming from the outlet channels of the manufacturer or from one of the major retail vendors.  A key consideration is in availability of full capacity of manufacturer’s warranty (and not a retailer’s warranty).  For business-grade machines, that’s at least 3 years.  If the warranty offered is only a year, then it’s coming from the retailer or whoever  is doing reconditioning.

I’ve done well with a reconditioned machine that I got through one of the big retail vendors, and I did a 4-year manufacturer warranty on it. The only thing I was missing on this particular machine is that it was missing the paper setup guide.

One other consideration is that with the Outlet channels, you’re limited to stock on hand.  It’s not uncommon to find odd configurations (especially ones that are under-provisioned on memory or storage), and if you want a specific configuration (e.g., more RAM), you may have a hard time finding all the specs you want, without making some sort of trade-offs.  Thus, if you’re watching an Outlet channel and you find something that’s suitable, be prepared to buy immediately.  If you don’t find what you’re looking for, keep checking back, because you never know what will turn up.

I have a couple of friends that routinely buy Macs from Apple’s Outlet channel — that’s definitely a good way of saving some money.

Off-lease reconditioning can be workable, but there’s much more “caveat emptor” on that. I noted in a separate post that it’s essential to replace parts that wear out (especially hard drives), and I wouldn’t consider doing a reconditioning of a home-grade machine.

 

A place where facial recognition fails…

I have a friend who’s blind (and *very* reliant on her iPhone), who also has elementary school-aged kids.  There’s a lot of stuff on there that the kids shouldn’t have access to. She does have facial recognition set, but it happens where one of the kids may grab the phone (and she not even seeing that they have it), and then waving it in front of her face, where they have access.

An underlying problem with nearly any biometric is that if somebody else can establish access that way, then you’re permanently penetrated.  You can easily change a passcode, but you can’t change your fingerprint, voice print, retina, etc.  And the biometrics aren’t invulnerable to spoofing.

I got burned on an off-lease refurb a couple of years ago.  I think the only work that had been done beyond physical cleaning of the outer case (I never saw the inside), was re-imaging the hard drive with a fresh copy of Windows.  We got about 9 months out of it before a batch of Patch Tuesday updates somehow made it impossible to get to Office 365.

Since then, my rule for refurbs is that anything that typically wears out through use, must be replaced.  In particular, that would be a hard drive, cooling fan and battery.  If those are not brand new, then you’re probably not saving money, just buying pending problems from the previous user.

Conversely, I do have a refurb that was done mostly correctly, especially with a new hard drive.  The battery and fan are original, but in decent shape, and it’s been a sturdy machine.

I confirm that.  I was looking at an old Win 7 Home machine yesterday (where I have updates set to check/notify, but not install), and I did get an offer for Chredge. It’s offered as an update to Edge, but I don’t believe that the original Edge was installed on this machine.

I’m preparing to retire this machine, so I marked Chredge to be ignored.

 

Triage.  Microsoft is still pretty much committed to releasing semi-annual feature set updates on Spring/Fall basis. Any lags upset the cycle for the next release.

I believe that there is a faulty assumption that when stuff gets out the door, that the remaining work of users doing gamma testing is mostly a matter of polishing and fine-tuning, and that the AI testing processes are trustworthy of cleanups quickly.

There’s a bunch of wishful thinking on the part of the people who have the final go/no-go decision of releases, especially if the decisions have been delegated to AI processes.

In all of this, a significant problem seems to be that the the marketing people are driving the communications.  Renames and token reworks seem to be driven by how they want to get their message across, not what necessarily serves customers (especially customers that ask nosy and inconvenient questions).

A similar rant is in how Microsoft continually recycles product names.  Outlook and Outlook Express was one good example of using virtually the same name for two products that were only marginally related.  And now Outlook.com for Microsoft’s email structure (after all the noise made about various Live-branded components). Or “Windows Defender” which was entirely different in Windows 7 than the product with the same name in Windows 10.

Something that’s also amusing is if you take a look at older releases of Windows (especially on a fresh install), where Microsoft was pushing something really hard at the time of initial release, but over the course of a few years lost interest entirely, or much lower emphasis. In the current era, Cortana comes to mind. When it first released, Cortana was supposed to be a competitor to Siri, Alexa and Hey Google, and now (fortunately) it’s pretty muted, unless you’re interacting through Office 365 (or now, Microsoft 365).

For whatever Microsoft is announcing now, give it a year or 18 months, and they’ll be announcing similar changes, when the marketers decide that the changes made this time around aren’t really getting through.

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doriel, alQamar, Cybertooth

An alternate way of getting ISOs — not just 1909, but all versions of Windows 10, 8.1 and even 7 is using the Microsoft Windows and Office ISO Download tool from heidoc.net. https://heidoc.net/joomla/technology-science/microsoft/67-microsoft-windows-and-office-iso-download-tool . Text at this link notes:

This tool allows an easy and comfortable way to download genuine Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 disk images (ISO) directly from Microsoft’s servers, as well as Office 2010, Office 2013, Office 2016, Office 2019, Expression Studio and Office for Mac.

As noted, this tool downloads directly from Microsoft, and all supported versions, including Home, Pro, and Education editions,  32 and 64, N and K versions, and all available languages.  The tool also offers downloads for Office (including Mac versions), as well as Developer and Insider Preview releases, and Dell OEM images.

Going this route, you can get the version you want, when you want it, and from any computer that runs Windows (and any version) and you don’t have to be subject to whatever version that Microsoft is currently making available through normal release channels.

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Fletch1441, gjacwel, Elly, petesmst, zat_so, RiverRat42, woody

I have found Adobe’s licensing methodologies to be more abusive than any others that I’ve seen. I had a similar issue several years ago, although I don’t remember the detail.

[ob disclaimer: I Am Not a Lawyer, nor do I play one on TV.]

The underlying issue is that most EULA are contracts that are conducted under the parameters of Universal Commercial Code, or UCC.   It’s UCC that allows for boilerplate contracts that are legally binding with “take it or leave it” terms, where there’s no capacity of negotiation, and where the offers, as presented, entirely favor the offerer, including, as described here, requirements of dispute resolution through arbitration.  Another commonly-included item is what I call the “weasel clause”, that allows the offerer to change terms of the contract: unlaterally, immediately, irrevocably, and without prior notice or negotiation.

My occasional experience with Adobe is that they’re pretty active on invoking the weasel clause to change terms that better suit their preferences at the moment.  Prior payment for software is irrelevant to them. All that matters is the current terms.

The only way I can see this ever changing is if somebody manages to convince a court that terms are unconscionable, but Adobe’s lawyers are pretty adept at keeping them out of any legal process that they don’t control. They may not win every arbitration case, but they don’t have to.  And even if they lose, since it’s not a court ruling, there’s no precedent that can be used in subsequent disputes.

Although I detest doing business with Microsoft and their arcane licensing methodologies, I will take them every day over Adobe.  Although there’s enough places where there’s no reasonable alternatives, given the choice between buying Adobe and buying a competing product, I would choose the competing product 6 times out of 5.

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Cybertooth

We’ve settled on Zoom, after having used consumer Skype, GoToMeeting, VSee and slack. We’re a non-profit, and Zoom’s pricing and licensing structure works well for us.

I concur on what’s mentioned about Zoom above.  Besides that, we also like the security, the capacity for whiteboarding, and the capacity for screen sharing. Screen sharing is really useful.  Most of the time, it tends to be shared document content in a meeting, or sometimes, somebody that’s taking notes during a meeting. However, since it’s possible to request remote control, it’s also a good (although basic) way of doing troubleshooting. We also have a dedicated remote access tool that works really well, but for some tasks, it’s often faster to just share a screen in Zoom (especially if there’s already an open connection) than it is to start up a more formal remote control session. Breakout rooms are also nice to have.

Before we moved to Zoom, we were using VSee. VSee positions itself for telemedicine, including security that’s sufficient for stuff subject to HIPAA regulations. They’re excellent on security, using VPN connections, and they’re good for video on connections with limited bandwidth.  When we left them a couple of years ago, their chat client was mediocre (and part of why we were doing chat with Slack), but it’s improved a lot since then.  In our experience, Slack is (was) the superior chat client, but Zoom is suitably close, unless you really need to exploit all of Slack’s advanced features.

When we dropped Slack, they were still just getting into audio/video, so I don’t have experience with their current product, but I’m guessing that it may be a little less than Zoom, which started with audio/video first.

GoToMeeting works fine, but is really only suitable for group meetings, and not individual discussions.  Zoom has the feel of bridging the group features of GTM with the more individual connectivity that we have found in consumer Skype and VSee.

I don’t have any personal experience with Teams, but my external observation indicates that Teams may work well when you’re working in a Microsoft enterprise environment, but less so, if you don’t have all the Microsoft pieces in place, including Outlook, Exchange, Active Directory, and other MS products.  As others have noted, it’s probably best for large orgs, but for smaller ones, other products may be better suited.

All in all, we’re quite happy with Zoom.

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Mr. Austin