From: Bill Gates
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 10:05 AM
To: Jim Allchin
Cc: Chris Jones (WINDOWS); Bharat Shah (NT); Joe Peterson; Will Poole; Brian Valentine; Anoop Gupta (RESEARCH)
Subject: Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame
I am quite disappointed at how Windows Usability has been going backwards and the program management groups don't drive usability issues.
Let me give you my experience from yesterday.
I decided to download (Moviemaker) and buy the Digital Plus pack ... so I went to Microsoft.com. They have a download place so I went there.
The first 5 times I used the site it timed out while trying to bring up the download page. Then after an 8 second delay I got it to come up.
This site is so slow it is unusable.
It wasn't in the top 5 so I expanded the other 45.
These 45 names are totally confusing. These names make stuff like: C:\Documents and Settings\billg\My Documents\My Pictures seem clear.
They are not filtered by the system ... and so many of the things are strange.
Read the rest here:
http://gizmodo.com/5019516/classic-...crosoft-over-xp
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Obviously, the memo is quite dated. However, even though it's dated, not much seems to have happened since it's been written. The problems have only partially been addressed and Vista has not made the situation any better for MSFT. C'mon Bill, you could have dropped the hammer a bit more than just writing a memo.
Rumors have it that at staff meetings there's a dedicated person to count the "F" Bomb that Bill seems to be dropping left and right. (I knew there's a reason to love this guy!)
M.
