[ale] Re: This bites (was Re: [ale] More on Mozilla/Java)

[Joseph A Knapka]

Thompson Freeman wrote:
> 
> On 25 Mar 2002, James P. Kinney III wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, 2002-03-25 at 05:40, Joseph A Knapka wrote:
> >
> > > And what's a "happy customer"? One who's so utterly overjoyed
> > > to use the product that they actually take the time to
> > > mention it to someone else. It takes a *lot* of joy to make
> > > a customer that happy, whereas the amount of frustration it
> > > takes to produce a "pissed-off customer" is fairly small.
> > >
> > > On the other hand, having millions of pissed-off customers
> > > doesn't seem to be a problem for MicroShaft.
> > >
> >
> > My definition of a happy customer is one who is not pissed off. OK, so
> > that may be a bit circular. A happy customer feels that they have been
> > involved in a transaction where they got what they wanted at a price
> > that is acceptable. That is _still_ nebulous, I know. But quantifying
> > happiness is not my area :)
> >
> > I don't know how M$ manages to keep pissing off so many people and stay
> > in business. It must be the clout they have with their market position.
> 
> Possibly they do it by seldom selling directly to the end customer. If
> memory serves, even back in the days of MSDOS Microsoft sold most of their
> OS product to OEM's, who were also then obligated to the customer for
> support. Even with Windows, I was under the impression that has largely
> remained the same. Therefor, the aggrivated end user is not a Microsoft
> customer, and MS has only indirect responsibility to them.

And the end user isn't really *aware* of having paid M$ for
the privilege of being annoyed by their software, whereas
people who make the choice to move to free software are
almost always aware of the product they're using and complain
about it in exactly those terms.

I wonder how much OEM Windows installation pushes up the
price of a PC? I'd like to see some pro-open-source
ads: "This is your PC: $500. This is your PC on Windows:
$650. This is your PC on Linux: $500."

Cheers,

-- Joe
  Using open-source software: free.
  Pissing Bill Gates off: priceless.

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