Worst Microsoft Product?

Not to attack or belittle Microsoft in any way - but for our own entertainment... What is the worst Microsoft product or service you ever owned?

And on a slightly more up-beat note, what Microsoft product far exceeded your expectations?
 
And lastly, what is, in your opinion, the highest quality Microsoft product that does what it said it would do?


Note: Meaning if you didn't own Microsoft Bob you can't name it as the worst product or service - Own, to our Chinese friends also means downloaded and used.

And also don't fuse your expectations with it actually being the BEST product. Something doesn't have to be wonderful for it to be better than expected.

This entire thread is 100% objective and I'd be most interested to here WHY you think whatever you think.

Manip wrote:

Not to attack or belittle Microsoft in any way - but for our own entertainment... What is the worst Microsoft product or service you ever owned?

Well, not "owned", but certainly "used", Windows ME or Microsoft Bob for sure.

But the Office 2003 help system is still high on my list of "bad things from Microsoft", I also have it in for Word's handling of drawings and objects.

...since I own Windows (or do I own a license to use Windows?) does that mean I also own IE? Because I'm certainly disappointed in it's developmental pace between 2001 and 2006.

Manip wrote:

And on a slightly more up-beat note, what Microsoft product far exceeded your expectations?

Do "Microsoft Games" count? Because then I'd say "MechWarrior 3" (well, if it ran on Windows XP, that is). Although technically Microsoft owned FASA, who controlled the rights to the Battletech universe, the game was developed by Hasbro and published by Microprose (or something like that).

I'd say I like Windows Media Player 9 a bit too, but it has it's fair share of problems:
a) Excessive memory and CPU use compared to other media players
b) Doesn't display length of MPEG video files in the playlist, even though this was reported numerous times during the beta.

Oh, and Visual Studio 2003 of course (but the lack of the Visual Database Tools for SQL Server (rather than MSDE) in the Professional and Academic editions is a real let-down, I hope they add it back in SP1)

Manip wrote:

And lastly, what is, in your opinion, the highest quality Microsoft product that does what it said it would do?

Probably the unreported MS Encarta series, although I dislike the "World English Edition"/"British Edition" they churn out sometimes. (Although I haven't actually used Encarta since 2003)

worst product, well, theres lots that were bad that all kind of fit in that basket - ME would have to have caused me the most headaches handsdown though (what was I thinking using that on business workstation)...

quite a few far exceeded my expectations - such as qbasic (the free one that came with dos and began my career in app development when I was just a wee lad) and all their wireless keyboard/mice work awesomely for me even on just ONE battery! (still freaks me out how a device can work with a battery missing)...

Server 2003 SBS would have to be the best product I've had the joy to use, though those new VB.Express / SQL Express have really raised my eyebrows and might just take the win (and their FREE!)

Worst MS product would have to be the crap 'Microsoft' baseball cap I got with my student subscription (about a million years ago now)..  it was black with a hugh 'Microsoft' logo on the front...   rarest thing I've ever had the unfortunate privilege  of owning.

Software wise..  Win98 & WinME sucked, and I'm not too fond of the old SQL2k ent manager

Fav program would be Visual Studio

Worst MS product: Definately Windows ME.

Best product: I gotta say Flight Simulator. I've played that game since it was played on a black/green screen. And even then it kicked (I need to watch my language). However, a close runner-up is the newly aquired foldershare. What a brilliant concept.

Highest quality product:Since I'm a professionel developer, Visual Studio and the .NET platform immidiatley comes to mind. But the office products, especially excel and word, are also very good candidates.

I have never "owned" a Microsoft product. I have "licensed" it.

Manip wrote:

What is the worst Microsoft product or service you ever owned?

Toss-up between Windows ME and Exchange 5.5 and earlier

Manip wrote:

And on a slightly more up-beat note, what Microsoft product far exceeded your expectations?

MapPoint
 

Manip wrote:

And lastly, what is, in your opinion, the highest quality Microsoft product that does what it said it would do?

Rise of Nations

Worst product I actually owned... I had one of the early versions of FrontPage. Packaged with an Office installation probably. Was a shocking shocking product.

But I dare say if I had ever been a lucky owner of MS Bob then Bob would have been it.

Their best product that I use... Sql Server 2000 (err ignoring Enterprise Manager but incl Query Analyzer). Hard as nails that thing. You could go to the moon and back with it.

MS Barney comes in a close second.

I actually struggled to think of a product that *really* sucked - I mean, I didn't enjoy VB3 much, but it was still an important product that my former employer's business was dependent on. I did however port their code to VB5 at the first opportunity I had.

Then it struck me - Exchange Server 5. That was something I really struggled with. We bought a server from Dell with Microsoft Small Business Server edition on it. That was basically NT4 Server with restricted versions of SQL Server, Exchange and a few other things. Everything else was fine, but Exchange 5 really did crash a lot, the tools for managing it were minimal. And we had less than 10 users - god only knows what it's like when you have hundreds on it. I assume Exchange 2k and later are better (in the same was SQL7 was way better than what came before), but I left the company before that server was upgraded.

Thing I love best is everything .NET really. The smartest thing MS ever did.

Simo wrote:

Worst product I actually owned... I had one of the early versions of FrontPage. Packaged with an Office installation probably. Was a shocking shocking product.

Yay for "Themes", over-use of animated GIFs, and DHTML!

Simo wrote:

But I dare say if I had ever been a lucky owner of MS Bob then Bob would have been it.

Their best product that I use... Sql Server 2000 (err ignoring Enterprise Manager but incl Query Analyzer). Hard as nails that thing. You could go to the moon and back with it.

Query Analyzer really could do with some form of Intellisense through, even if it is just for column-names. Although I haven't used any of the new SQL Server 2005 tools yet, can anyone shed some light on those?

Simo wrote:

MS Barney comes in a close second.

MS Actimates? Why were you using those in the first place, you eejit

Manip wrote:

Not to attack or belittle Microsoft in any way - but for our own entertainment... What is the worst Microsoft product or service you ever owned?

Well, I guess that would have to be the Windows Explorer. The reason for this is quite simple. I want to look at folders the way I want and I want to be able to look at 2+ folders in the same window at the same time. Aside this personal preference, I think the user experience is horrible. (Alternative: xplorer²)

Manip wrote:

And on a slightly more up-beat note, what Microsoft product far exceeded your expectations?

I just recently started using InfoPath in my current project and I have to admit, it is capable of a lot more than I was aware of. Especially the interaction with Sharepoint is amazing.
Another winner here would be IE7 (yeah, I know, it's still in beta). About a year ago, I was so tired of IE6, that I tried several alternatives and finally stuck with Firefox. After the latest IE7 release came out, I tried it and am hooked. I only start Firefox rarely to visit sites, I suspect of using malicous code.

 

Manip wrote:

And lastly, what is, in your opinion, the highest quality Microsoft product that does what it said it would do?

In this category, the winner is: Sharepoint 2003. The reason for this is that Sharepoint delivers everything it promises. The main problem, IMHO, is the fact that people are trying to squeeze concepts, not suitable for Sharepoint, into the Sharepoint infrastructure. Later the same people start complaining that Sharepoint doesn't live up to their expectations.

EDIT: After reading rhm post, I just wanna add that I also had to think a while about a really crappy program. Windows Explorer was the first to come to mind... after 5 or so minutes.

I can say Bob!
Still have the box and original media.
No, I did not buy it. It was a giveaway at some store contest.

For that matter, forgive my showing off, I also have Windows 2 with original package and media. That was pretty bad, too.

As for the best, I'd say either Windows 2003 Server or, as said above, Flight Sim 2004.

KosherCoder wrote:

For that matter, forgive my showing off, I also have Windows 2 with original package and media. That was pretty bad, too.

You could get some serious money for that.

This one is pretty bad...

Does Windows Media Player class as a product? Because I can't find anything which is worse, besides IE.

One thing that exceeded my expectations was the speed at which the Classic UI theme runs on XP, and how nice it looks compared to XP's default theme.

Worst: F***Page (enough said! Thank goodness they're finally putting it out of its misery) although Internet Explorer (especially if we're talking printing) comes pretty close.

Best: SQL Server 2000. Solid as a rock. (Boy have they screwed up management with the sloooooooow Management Studio replacement for Enterprise Manager).

Sadly, I think most Microsoft products rate as "poor" as in buggy as hell or "How the hell did this get past QA?". These days the answer seems to be "Let's not worry about shipping one product. We'll ship endless dribs and drabs over the internet as and when we finish testing them". A step backwards in my view and a nightmare to control and keep track of.

And I still don't understand how you can have a "market leader" product used by millions all over the world that can't even count the number of pages in a document properly (How often have you seen "Page 95 of 93" in a Word document footer!) or can seemingly at random print a big red cross where the image in the document shown on screen should be?