IE Problems and Useless help sites

Though my friends consider me crazy I still use Internet Explorer mainly because most of my clients do so and it is important to see what goes on from browser to browser when working with software. For instance a lot of applications created by smaller companies do not work on IE due to bugs or misinformation. Telling a customer which browser to use is really not an option even though programmers would love to be able to do so.

That being said I am curious as to why there is not a lot of flack regarding IE 9's conflicts with applications such as Yahoo mail and IE 8's memory leak or hog or whatever problem. I suspect IE 8's memory problem is due to updates that were intended for fix IE 9's issues and thus there was not the regression testing done because MS wants people to move forward.

This is of course my guess but I still remember when MS used to supply MS Word converters and the resulting files were at least a 100 times bigger than the original file .... funny that.

How did we go from blasting MS for its buggy software but still holding them to task to what we have now which is companies like MS and Yahoo flying under the radar with the consumer taking on the challenge and in fact filling search engines (promoted by Yahoo's answer engine) with bad and some time dangerous advise.

Is there a way to get back to intelligent answers? Are KB articles starting to lose their value .... it would be a real shame if true knowledge and intelligent answers were completely removed by the pabulum we see today.

Is there any way one can filter out the stupid services that simply provide links to additional searchs? Is there a way to reduce any possible income they could get via clicks?

Please send me a note. ......it would be fun to design a reverse click that resulted in a negative value to google or who ever.

Pet Peeves With Vendor Responses To Software / Hardware Problems

A.    Waste your time support requests

1.     Getting you to reinstall the software instead of advising the correct way to reinstall which ensures greater chances of success. Support teams frequently do not understand that your machine could have been mid updates or had partial uninstalls done. It is important not to waste time trying to fix a machine that is in a mix state.

a.      To perform a clean install on a PC running windows, especially for a program that is not quite working correctly, you should uninstall the software, reboot the machine with a cold boot and then install again. Short cuts lead to issues.

b.     You may even have to run a registry cleaner as with the case when I was trying to install Epsons printer driver and utilities on a machine that did not like the drivers. The constant install failures caused the registry to have entries that prevented a clean install. Free cleaners are available.

2.     Getting you to reboot your system .. again.. just because they are on the line… though rebooting does clean memory what is more important is the steps you take before and after to identify any differences in how your machine is working or configured.
3.   Suggesting advice that has no affect instead of escalating the problem or attempting to get help.
4.  Saying that no one else seems to have the problem.

    

B.    Support people that insist they know it all even though they are limited to their domain experience. This is especially frustrating when you are dealing with someone who does not understand subtle errors and they waste your time getting you to do things that are pointless, dangerous to your security access or just one of several steps that need to be taken. I get this all the time, especially from Telco support teams. Bell Canada has a terrible time escalating issue and I recently had the wonderful experience of having to argue with the support team that I should not have to expose my system to a security breach simply because their software was not working.. worst they were very proud that they could offer me a device that I would have to purchase to be able to use their service the way I was already paying for. What they clearly do not have is a method of providing a consistent set of support steps. Every time I phoned in I got a different answer.

Common issues With Companies (Examples from Bell Canada and Bitdefender)

1.     Every time you call in or email you get a different answer, sometimes the answers are conflicting or semi dangerous. In the case of Bell Canada’s staff they first gave me advice with nor warning that my machine would increase its risk of virus attacks if I did what they said. When questioned they did not have any deep knowledge of the fix or its side effects. 
Why Not

·       set up good support kb with fast indexes.

·       Invest in a CRM system that provides users with the ability to post issues in categories

Lack of response to issues or worst, hiding in the wings while your user community struggles to fix what is going on. In 2010 Bitdefender released an upgrade that caused the system to think each of its files was a virus and started deleting itself. This issue went from bad to worse with the total lack of response by the company and disrespectful way they covered their ass. They eventually bribed people with free versions but there was no focused effort and they let the community as a whole try to figure out what to do. Eventually they came up with fixes that were not complete and too late for a lot of us.

Worst of all they refused to admit they blew it for ages and even when they did admit it was done in such a lousy way that I personally lost all respect for the management team. They came across as arrogant and in fact gave the impression they were more concerned about getting sued than saying sorry.

How Companies Can Improve Support And Save Costs and Reputation (Example Serif.com)

The following is not meant to be mean or single out a firm but instead is just real examples where by the firm could save a lot of time, money and customer frustration by addressing issues instead of wasting the consumers time.

Serif, makers of some cool graphic tools provides free downloads of some of their software. Now the thing I like is the software is truly free and you can actually try it out and see if you like what it does. Not all functionality is there but unlike many firms who render the trial totally useless with the inability to save your work or stick water marks all over everything this company is very fair.

That being said they have a dismal track record of providing installs that work smoothly and even when tons of people including myself try to get help the support is a waste of time, though enthusiastic. In my case I had to solve my own problem and then I sent the company a break down as to the issue and how to verify what I found. They had simply released an outdated installer with some of their downloads …not all though.

Serif is not unique in the software world and could benefit from:

1.     Checking their support groups for common problems

2.     Compiling a list of key debug steps

3.     Compiling a list of related or common issues and providing easy access to this information from their main web pages.

4.     Creating better information flows between the QA department and the end support team.

5.     Leveraging the user issue log instead of making the same mistake over and over.

6.     Stop recommending steps to follow that do not fix the issue nor get to the root cause.

Annoying Answers To Requests For Help

Don’t you just hate it when some idiot adds a post about how great the software you are pulling your hair out over is working. There seems to be a ton of people out there that just jump at the chance to spew out the same inane comments or advise that have no relevance to the situation. Hopefully we can find a better way of tracking answers to issues and tying the threads together without having to go through the millions of sites that just repeat information from other sites like Ask ….. does anyone really get any value from it?

The following are just a few of the amazing bits of advise

1.     Instead of providing help the person states that he or she has no problem installing or using the software … that’s nice .. so what is your point .. if we had no problems do you think we would be asking for help.

2.     Suggesting that they use another OS because it works on that one .. Oh good, we are all going to waste hours if not days reloading our software and going backwards to previous versions just because a piece of software does not work.

3.     Constantly asking for useless information because that is all they know .. like asking for detailed file sizes or check sums .. come on guys … this is grasping at straws.. yes a file can be corrupted but that is hardly the most common cause, especially if the person has attempted it several times.

4.     When in doubt provide advice for a totally different problem – I always find this one fascinating  for they are so serious about the answer … even though there is absolutely no relevance to the problem at hand.

Bad Code and Bad Advice - Consumer Heal Thyself Because Yahoo Won’t

This blog is dedicated to getting the software manufacturers to provide built in debugging tools for the consumer. These tools could be stripped down traces or advanced memory dumps it does not matter, what does matter is putting the power of fixing software in the hands of the consumer. If software companies are going to continually make the consumer do their debugging and QA for them then we should at least be able to save time figuring out who is at fault. Is it a long running process, all the advertisement add-ons or simply a buggy third party tool that cracked up with the latest release.

As a senior software designer who grew up with flipping switches to load compilers and loved assembler coding I don’t appreciate the garbage code that is simply dumped onto the market. I understand that things are very complex – I know for I work with numerous interfaces across many platforms – but we are now talking the basics.

It would be nice to have simple, easy to implement trace and debug tools for the consumer. This would me that companies would admit that they cannot afford the time or resources to fully test their software, especially when you have a million different combinations of hardware, software and user configurations. This is not a bad thing .. it is just the way it is. I am almost to the point of dumping Yahoo mail because the system is practically useless with IE 9 – Instead I would like to know what is causing the slow performance so I can turn off the offending code.

The other thing that I would to address in this blog is the constant repetitive bad advise that is propagated every time someone has a bug. I may sound rude but on many sites the answers provided by the user community are a waste of time and never deal with the root cause. The software team should be the one fixing the issue at the core .. not us poor smucks trying to find a work around. Some of my favorites issues are:

1.     Software downloads that won’t install.

2.     Release failures and inability to take responsibility.

3.     Yahoo’s embarrassing release with missing functionality.

The other part to this blog is dealing with bad or incomplete advice. I always love answers such as the constant advice given to disable add-ons. How about the software companies actually testing their product before release instead. It seems ridiculous that all functionality should always be lost as the first option given.

Better yet it would be nice if MS and Yahoo and the likes would offer us the ability to trace the resource hogs and truly help them debug their mistakes. Right now I am fighting Yahoo mail and IE9 .. total garbage the two together.

Though I agree that add-ons can be a problem but they are not the real issue.. the real issue is the inability for the consumer to manage the software mess that they are given.

I am a senior software designer, architect with deep roots in Assembler all the way up to the latest in services design and I run into this all the time.. instead of tackling the real problem of buggy code everyone one runs around with Band-Aids.. I can't believe the garbage advice I see sometimes .. some is downright dangerous for your system.

Anyways I am going to push for better client specific debug tools that would allow a consumer to identify the true cause of their performance issues. Enough of the software guys hiding behind bs answers or just ignoring us.....