User-friendliness of Microsoft
Google returns 497,000 results for the search “Microsoft jokes”. It is justified by experiences like this. I haven’t tried Windows Live Writer until recently. It is a wonderful blogging software that makes lives of bloggers simpler, but installing it can be a daunting task.
A search for “Live Writer” in the Microsoft Download Center took me to this page. It is an old page from which I downloaded the 2.3MB installer and tried to install the required software. Thrice. It gave me hell, with the installation hanging at 99% each time.
I then googled for a direct setup file of Live Writer and landed here. When we press “Download” button on this page, it redirects us to a funny page while the download of a new 1.1MB installer starts.
The installer worked, thankfully. But take a look at the funny page I just mentioned. It is common knowledge that Microsoft likes to treat its users as dummies. But what can any dummy make out of a page which has three empty screenshots that look like an idle artist’s doodles and three messages which start with “If you see a message asking if you want to…” and are followed by non-keywords? And which responsible website of such great importance not update itself even when a later version of installer is available?
Very helpful again, Microsoft.
Image Source: Microsoft Windows Live Writer download page.
Yeah, I totally agree. I installed LiveWriter about a year ago, when it wasn’t so complicated to find the download page. It installed perfectly, too. It is fantastic. I love it so much that I wouldn’t even think of trying another software in place of it.
However, it didn’t have an automatic version tracking feature, so I recently went looking for an upgrade, thinking that maybe some of the user interface has been refined further. Gosh, it was hard to find. For some reason MS has it bundled with on a page with a bunch of other seemingly related software, and it isn’t clear at all which link to click for this specific software. Then it came as an msi package, which my computer cannot install. (I’ve tried all sorts of tips and searched all over looking for help with this, but no soap.) That’s when I decided to leave well enough alone.
I’m pretty sure that when I installed LiveWriter it may still have been in Beta, but even so, it’s one of the best and most useful software that I use. I would think that you will find that LiveWriter is intuitive to figure out, and makes a lot of what’s not fun about composing a blog post go away.
I am already finding it very useful.
The way Microsoft came up with such a good software and the way they can’t make it available well enough to the users says a lot about their abilities and their weaknesses.