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Don't Celebrate the Demise of UltimateTV too Quickly
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Posted by: retrodog

I hear all these people making fun of UltimateTV and sounding like they will be happy with it being defeated by Tivo. What a pity.

Sure you have friends or aquaintences who you've argued with endlessly about what was better. Sure you will feel vindicated when you opposition lays at your feet and you are victorious,,, but,,,

Just remember that the laws of economy dictate that as a consumer, competition is good. That's what gets the rates down and improves the service. What we are seeing here is RISING RATES and mediocre improvements in service. All of the benefits we should be getting with technology and competition are virtually non-existent.

So go ahead and celebrate the poor success of Replay and Ultimate but the only loser is YOU and ME. Think about it. :(

Posted by: mostman

quote:
Originally posted by retrodog
Just remember that the laws of economy dictate that as a consumer, competition is good. That's what gets the rates down and improves the service. What we are seeing here is RISING RATES and mediocre improvements in service. All of the benefits we should be getting with technology and competition are virtually non-existent.

So go ahead and celebrate the poor success of Replay and Ultimate but the only loser is YOU and ME. Think about it. :(

Replay is doing just fine. They will provide TiVo with all the competition they need.
-Mike

Posted by: dgh

quote:
Originally posted by retrodog
Don't Celebrate the Demise of UltimateTV too Quickly

Right - take your time savor the moment :)

quote:
Originally posted by retrodog
Just remember that the laws of economy dictate that as a consumer, competition is good.

What I really want as a consumer is competition over a standards-based PVR. (The standards in this case being the guide data service.) That way I can concentrate on the buying the most bang for the buck without worrying about whether my flavor of PVR will still have access to guide data next year. What we have today in PVRs is Beta vs. VHS vs. Vcord (remember that one?) or Laserdisc vs. CED. The "which one is going to win" question slows adoption.

Posted by: hutchca

A little competition never hurt anyone...

Except Netscape, SUN, Corel and anyone else who competes directly with Microsoft.

Posted by: AndyK

quote:
Originally posted by mostman

Replay is doing just fine. They will provide TiVo with all the competition they need.
-Mike

Agreed (really!)!

<sarcasm>

According to a few people in the Replay forum, they've already beaten Tivo into submission and only Sonic Blue makes products worth owning!

And let's not forget Moxi, according to many, they're the future of PVR's

</sarcasm>

Posted by: spenserj

I wouldn't count on Moxi -

http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/sto...2853232,00.html

Posted by: JustJeff

quote:
Originally posted by spenserj
I wouldn't count on Moxi -

http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/sto...2853232,00.html

This story is, in a word: FUD. (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) Moxi isn't going anywhere.

For a good belly laugh, check out David Coursey's interview with Phillip Swann from TV Predictions.com. Swann seems to think the Moxi unit was a glorified home network gateway that you could replicate with $100 worth of equipment from Radio Shack. If this is the kind of source Coursey considers reliable, you can draw your own conclusions about the value of his articles.

Posted by: Corey140

You wouldn't be able to get this through most tivofantics head if you drilled it into them.

Posted by: TheSimpsons

What about the fact that if there is no competition, people looking to buy A PVR would HAVE to choose TiVo. All those 100,000’s of users which have ReplayTV or Ultimate TV would have to buy a TiVo instead. What does this mean…TiVo will be rolling in a giant pit of money, what do you think they are going to do with this money?? Make TiVo better of course!Just think about it, if a business you work for just got 10 billion dollars, don’t you think you’ll be getting a better vacation and flat screen monitors for your computers. THE MORE MONEY TIVO GETS THE BETTER IT CAN BE FOR US! Why should we have to settle, for our company to have greater chances of hitting bankruptcy, or increased rates primarily just to stay in business? We also wouldn’t have people bad-mouthing TiVo. If everyone who owns a PVR owned a TiVo, TiVo would be a bigger name by now. That’s inevitable-a product with a huge user base is bound to be noticed, then people will start growing interested in the product and before you know it the whole world will be TiVoized. I’ll bet Sony wishes that they would not have to worry about competition but rather be able to sell every TELEVISION IN THE WORLD! Heck, if they had the money to, I bet TiVo may just consider adding things like adding commercial skip. TiVo will be the only device with that world famous “pause live TV” technology. So it won’t be I want A PVR anymore, its going to be I want a TiVo! If you ask me-A TiVo ONLY market would indubitably be the strongest way to go! :)

-The Simpsons :) :D :p :cool: :eek:

Posted by: Rob Helmerichs

TheSimpsons:

Sure! After all, that's exactly what happened with Microsoft and Windows! Thank God they got their total market domination, so they could concentrate on making life better for their customers!

Ahem.

No, I want TiVo to have competition, to help drive TiVo and its features onward and upward. I just want TiVo to stay #1, so my two-TiVo investment will continue to pay off...

Posted by: retrodog

Are you really serious or just trolling? There is no way that you can really believe that. Is there???:eek:

Posted by: unoriginal

quote:
Originally posted by JustJeff

For a good belly laugh, check out David Coursey's interview with Phillip Swann from TV Predictions.com. Swann seems to think the Moxi unit was a glorified home network gateway that you could replicate with $100 worth of equipment from Radio Shack.

All you had to do to convince us that Moxi would survive was tell us that Phillip Swann thinks it is crap or it will fail or something like that.

Drink Moxi

Posted by: rogo

LOL on Swann *and* Coursey.

Jeff, it's too bad you can't really tell us anything. Cause I think most Tivo fans actually do want Moxi to make it. It's hard to brush off all the stuff in Business Week and elsewhere, though.

With Echostar being wishy washy and AOLTW not committing to even a trial (both are investors in Moxi), it's difficult to get a read on whether Moxi is really going to make it.

Rough math gives Tivo a 3 year head start and at least 750,000 users before a Moxi box ships. The stuff about Moxi that is "Tivo killing" is the high end stuff, which we are left wondering is what Echostar would ship anyway.

Moxi needs to get sanctioned to build the box on its own. Sell it for $1500. You'll sell a few thousand to us geeks and then, maybe, you can go from there.

Otherwise, it's gonna be a Tivo world. That is *not* a bad thing, but I think a competitive world would be better.

Mark

Posted by: pv

quote:
Originally posted by JustJeff
For a good belly laugh, check out David Coursey's interview with Phillip Swann from TVPredictions.com.

Slowly I turned!

We used to get "tvpredictions" posting here, and everything said was either reposted from somewhere else, bloody obvious, or totally wacky. As in less accurate than Miss Cleo wacky.

I'm not going to take news of Moxi's health from a developer (you know as well as I that We're Always The Last To Know Anything), but I definitely dropping the credibility down a few points knowing that the author of the story considers tvpredicitions.com a useful source. PV

Posted by: pv

Faced with stories like this, I have to ask - why does anyone fear microsoft? They essentially have two products, office and windows. They have never had any lasting success in any other market segment they've tried.

I even include the xbox here. Sure, it's sold well, but microsoft was touting about the homestation project (which is looking like it will be xbox2) *before* the first xbox ever shipped. They were casting FUD on their own product!

Face it, Balmer is completely off his nut. PV

Posted by: interactiveTV

quote:
Originally posted by pv
Faced with stories like this, I have to ask - why does anyone fear microsoft? They essentially have two products, office and windows. They have never had any lasting success in any other market segment they've tried.

The urban legend reborn.

Try (and I don't distinguish between internal R&D and purchased as who cares where it was born):

Peripherals such as mice, keyboards, joysticks
Games such as flight sim, Links, Age of Empires
Web browser (duh!)
Windows Media Player
Microsoft Money
MSN
Hotmail

I'd throw in PocketPC as well, but more iffy in terms of commercial success. Share is good and growing but I'll put that one in the maybe pile.

and I could probably come up with a few more.

Now, sure Microsoft levergaed dominance in OS and Office to get some of these things to where they are today, but that wasn't your point, only lasting success.

Each of the above is considered (by the industry) a success and each of the above is at least on its second, if not third generation. Some, like Money, are phenominal successes given the prior dominance of the competitor (Quicken). Some, like Hotmail, are purchased but remain a sucsess. Some like the mice, are pure genious in marketing.

_ITV

Posted by: jlb

quote:
What about the fact that if there is no competition, people looking to buy A PVR would HAVE to choose TiVo. All those 100,000’s of users which have ReplayTV or Ultimate TV would have to buy a TiVo instead. What does this mean…TiVo will be rolling in a giant pit of money, what do you think they are going to do with this money?? Make TiVo better of course!Just think about it, if a business you work for just got 10 billion dollars, don’t you think you’ll be getting a better vacation and flat screen monitors for your computers. THE MORE MONEY TIVO GETS THE BETTER IT CAN BE FOR US! Why should we have to settle, for our company to have greater chances of hitting bankruptcy, or increased rates primarily just to stay in business? We also wouldn’t have people bad-mouthing TiVo. If everyone who owns a PVR owned a TiVo, TiVo would be a bigger name by now. That’s inevitable-a product with a huge user base is bound to be noticed, then people will start growing interested in the product and before you know it the whole world will be TiVoized. I’ll bet Sony wishes that they would not have to worry about competition but rather be able to sell every TELEVISION IN THE WORLD! Heck, if they had the money to, I bet TiVo may just consider adding things like adding commercial skip. TiVo will be the only device with that world famous “pause live TV” technology. So it won’t be I want A PVR anymore, its going to be I want a TiVo! If you ask me-A TiVo ONLY market would indubitably be the strongest way to go!

And what, pray tell, in this situation would keep them from raising the price further? If TiVO were your ONLY choice, you would be forced to par whatever price they set if you want the thing.

I agree, competition is good for any market. Without a little, TiVO would have no incentive to use this "giant pit of money" for anything but their own bottom line.

Posted by: rdunlap

Microsoft's already working on a it's Homestation....
Like Tivo...but could always use more bells, whistles and tweaks....See following for XBOX/DVR plans...

http://msn.com.com/2100-1103-816120.html

Posted by: TheSimpsons

quote:
Originally posted by retrodog
Are you really serious or just trolling? There is no way that you can really believe that. Is there???:eek:

Do I believe that? I’m not exactly too sure, that was just pretty much my opinion of what the “positive” side of what Ultimate TV’s failure might bring. Do I think that if TiVo “makes it big” that it will become “corrupt” and start hiking rates even higher? Of course! That’s practically inevitable. Sure competition never hurt anyone (unless of course that’s Gore losing to Bush- he looks like he’s heavier than a Daisy Cutter bomb now :D ), I’m simply trying to prove that there are MAJOR positive effects as well. While I don’t condone or personally want TOTAL MARKET domination such as that of Microsoft-as Medieval showed how unfortunate that would be :eek: , I just wish TiVo could become as big as it truly deserves to (as I’m sure we all wish that when we have to explain what TiVo is to people again and again and again.) ;)

-The Simpsons :) :D :cool: :eek: :p

Posted by: BuggyBoyVT

quote:
A little competition never hurt anyone...

Except Netscape, SUN, Corel and anyone else who competes directly with Microsoft.

Don't forget KMart! Announced today they will be closing about 260 stores in their bankruptcy.

Posted by: BuggyBoyVT

quote:
We used to get "tvpredictions" posting here, and everything said was either reposted from somewhere else, bloody obvious, or totally wacky.

2 or 3 of those would be my work. I stopped because I am getting sick of this guy making everything worse than it is, and repeats of the same EchoStar crap every week.

On that post "actors in bad need of a hit", I think it should be changed to fit the definition required of Charlie Ergan :D .

Posted by: Mike_4462

quote:
Originally posted by rdunlap
Microsoft's already working on a it's Homestation....
Like Tivo...but could always use more bells, whistles and tweaks....See following for XBOX/DVR plans...

http://msn.com.com/2100-1103-816120.html

I hate these type devices. I don't want to sit on my couch and check email and surf the web (keyboards and mice in the living room don't mix). Meanwhile I may want to watch a recorded program and someone else will want to play videogames, what do you do? This device gives you no mobility. Why on Earth would I want to buy a piece of equipment that has all the components wrapped into one with substandard features, when I could buy them separate and get better features? Work, on perfecting PVR's and the ability to network between them and you have a winner. This device is going down.

Posted by: pv

quote:
Originally posted by interactiveTV

>The urban legend reborn.

Based on this list? Keep trying.

>Peripherals such as mice, keyboards, joysticks
Not a single one made by microsoft. And other than maybe the intellimouse (I'm using one now), none are market leaders.

>Games such as flight sim, Links, Age of Empires
Flight simulator I'll give you. The rest aren't exactly anywhere near the most popular titles of their genres.

>Web browser (duh!)
Built into the OS (har!), and in any event, free.

>Windows Media Player
free.

>Microsoft Money
Commercial disaster, tried to sink intuit by giving it away. Even that didn't work.

>MSN
far, far from a leader.

>Hotmail
free, and not worth that.

>I'd throw in PocketPC as well, but more iffy in terms of commercial success.
As in still massively behind palm and handspring.

I stand by my earlier comment. Microsoft has office and windows. Nothing else is keeping Steve Balmer in happy juice. PV

Posted by: burnsy

quote:
Originally posted by rdunlap
Microsoft's already working on a it's Homestation....
Like Tivo...but could always use more bells, whistles and tweaks....See following for XBOX/DVR plans...

http://msn.com.com/2100-1103-816120.html

Microsoft denies Homestation but confrims Freestyle which will move the DVR into Windows XP maybe this fall.

quote:
The best of TV through "Freestyle" technology for Windows XP — Shouldn't prime time fit your schedule instead of the other way around? Digital video recording for Windows XP will allow you to design a TV lineup that's custom-tailored for your life. Find what you want to watch, let your PC take care of the digital recording, and enjoy programs when your schedule allows.

It is Monday morning and you're about to leave the house and go to work. While finishing your coffee, you pick up the remote for your Windows XP PC and bring up a program guide showing all your favorite sitcom reruns coming on during the week. Reading through the program descriptions, you see several episodes you haven't yet watched. With a few easy clicks, you lock in the digital recording for every episode you want.
You'll have the ability to watch and control live TV through your Windows XP PC.

You are using your Windows XP PC to send some email while also watching a baseball game in a small window on your monitor. The phone rings so you hit pause. After hanging up, you resume watching where you left off. On the next pitch, a savory base-clearing home run ties the score! You call your roommate over, switch to full-screen mode on the TV hooked up to your PC, and with the remote, you replay the hit in slow motion.

Posted by: interactiveTV

quote:
Originally posted by pv
I stand by my earlier comment. Microsoft has office and windows. Nothing else is keeping Steve Balmer in happy juice. PV

First, who cares if Microsoft doesn't make the mouse. Does Tivo make the box? I don't get the point. Modern business.

I would take that NOTHING that Microsoft has any day of the week. Let's look at two divisions of revenue?

Consumer Software, Services, and Devices operating segment includes Xbox video game system, MSN Internet access, MSN network services, PC and online games, learning and productivity software, mobility, and embedded systems.

Six months Ending Dec. 31 2001 Revenue? $1.547 billion

Consumer Commerce Investments operating segment includes Expedia, Inc., the HomeAdvisor online real estate service, and the CarPoint online automotive service. Other primarily includes Hardware and Microsoft Press

Six months Ending Dec. 31 2001 revenue? $185 million

Annual run rate for these 2 divisions is over $3 billion!

But hey, that's nothing. 3 billion nothings.

Keep Steve happy is a different story. Nothing keeps Steve happy, that's why he keeps putting his head through the wall. But that isn't the point.

You use an intellimouse
admit Flight Sim is tops
WMP isn't free (to the consumer it is but so is broadcast television, that doesn't mean it isn't a business).
MSN is the second or third largest ISP, depending how you count

$3 billion. I don't see how that's nothing. You have any idea how few companies do $3 billion in annual revenue?

_ITV

Posted by: 511PF

quote:
Originally posted by pv
Faced with stories like this, I have to ask - why does anyone fear microsoft? They essentially have two products, office and windows. They have never had any lasting success in any other market segment they've tried.

Exchange does pretty well and is probably their best product. SQL Server is still (I believe) #3 in the database market and #2 in the Windows database market. I would say that that's not bad. Does anyone buy anything beside Visio in that market segment? IIS, while not a very good product, has done very well in the Fortune 500. (Although it is part of Windows now). I'm not defending their actions, but I do think they've made some successful products aside from Office and Windows.

Posted by: Axiom

quote:
Originally posted by pv
>Games such as flight sim, Links, Age of Empires
Flight simulator I'll give you. The rest aren't exactly anywhere near the most popular titles of their genres.

Age of Empires is the best-selling game ever in the real time strategy genre and has sold millions of copies. I'd call that a success.

Posted by: retrodog

Okay, down boy, I did't mean to hurt your feelings or sound like I thought you were crazy or an idiot or anything like that. Your original post just shocked me and I guess it showed.

I guess I buy into the philosophy that "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely".

I get a little nervous when someone seemingly signs up to the philosophy that a certain company is good and then promotes them as looking out for the public and customers, to the point of believing their total market domination would be the best thing to happen. I don't think that it ever is (unless there is an example I haven't thought of and then it would still be impossible to prove that some other time line wouldn't have been preferable).

I agree with parts of you post but only as explained a little more throrougly in the second post.

Lets get one thing perfectly straight here, mostly what you see on this board is people who think like you (well actually people who think like me but sound like you) in their promotion of TiVo. My only point was to point out a basic law of economics and technology as it pertains to competition in a free market.

As long as few of us sign up the apparent "total loyalty" that your first post implied, then the fewer chances of TiVo sitting back on their butt and getting fat on inflated rates.

Sorry that we disagree but that's just the way it is. And I never called you a loser. My statement said that the situation would just make us all losers. I still think that it would. But that's a lot different than me calling you a loser.

peace dude (or dudette):cool:

Posted by: pv

quote:
Originally posted by 511PF
Exchange does pretty well and is probably their best product.

Exchange is total crap. It's only good feature is that it's less annoying than outlook. There are MANY shareware, and even a couple freeware programs that are FAR better than exchange. People use exchange because it came with their computer.

quote:
SQL Server is still (I believe) #3 in the database market and #2 in the Windows database market.

Er, no. And again, probably the best of breed is a free product (mySQL. Love it). MS/SQL isn't taken seriously by *anyone* in the database world. And this is one of the things that I do for a living. Even microft thrall companies hate it.

quote:
IIS, while not a very good product, has done very well in the Fortune 500. (Although it is part of Windows now). I'm not defending their actions, but I do think they've made some successful products aside from Office and Windows.

And there you have the worst of the bunch. IIS should be banned from the internet. Why anyone wouldn't use apache, arguably the best free software out there (other than gcc), is beyond me. IIS is completely worthless!

All of these products are "we're there because we have to maintain a presence" level of quality. None of them gets decent support or competent maintenance. PV

P.S. I type corrected on "Age of Empires". But aren't you misspeaking a bit? I would think any of the Sid Meier games would rank higher. Civilization was so popular that there's a open source version of it in development!

Posted by: Axiom

quote:
Originally posted by pv
P.S. I type corrected on "Age of Empires". But aren't you misspeaking a bit? I would think any of the Sid Meier games would rank higher. Civilization was so popular that there's a open source version of it in development!

Technically the Civ games are turn-based instead of real-time and were very, very successful. Even so, they didn't dominate the sales charts the way the Age of Empires games have in the past several years.

Posted by: ahartman

quote:
Originally posted by JustJeff

This story is, in a word: FUD. (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) Moxi isn't going anywhere.

Where can I PayPal you a billion dollars?!? I've been wondering what FUD meant for a looooong time now.

Posted by: burnsy

quote:
Originally posted by pv

Exchange is total crap. It's only good feature is that it's less annoying than outlook. There are MANY shareware, and even a couple freeware programs that are FAR better than exchange. People use exchange because it came with their computer.

Clearly you have no idea what Exchange is.

Are you confusing it with Outlook Express?

Posted by: entrails99

No, he's probably confusing Exchange Server with Windows Exchange. Windows Exchange is the pre-Outlook e-mail client that came with Win95 and NT4.0.

Posted by: pv

quote:
Originally posted by burnsy
Are you confusing it with Outlook Express?

Rats! I actually was thinking of express. On the other hand, a predecessor to express was indeed caused exchange. And on the gripping hand, Exchange server is yet another example of a truly horrid piece of work, that costs a fortune, yet is outclassed by software that costs nothing. PV

Posted by: burnsy

quote:
Originally posted by pv

Rats! I actually was thinking of express. On the other hand, a predecessor to express was indeed caused exchange. And on the gripping hand, Exchange server is yet another example of a truly horrid piece of work, that costs a fortune, yet is outclassed by software that costs nothing. PV

Boy, I am glad I corrected you so you could get in another uninformed jab in at Microsoft. Thanks!

Posted by: JustJeff

quote:
Originally posted by burnsy

Boy, I am glad I corrected you so you could get in another uninformed jab in at Microsoft. Thanks!

How about an informed jab at Microsoft? When I worked at Microsoft, whose entire email infrastructure is based on Exchange (except what vestigial bits were left for WebTV employees who used UNIX-based email, such as myself), there were several times when the Exchange servers got so messed up that their reconstruction essentially knocked down email for large chunks of the company for two or three days at a time. Fortunately, because I was one of those who opted to use a POP mail client connecting to WebTV's internal UNIX-based mail servers, I had continuous access to email during these periods. Cracked me up, I can tell you.

Exchange works OK for small workgroups, but when you scale it up for use in very large companies, its shortcomings become obvious--at least in the bad old Windows NT days, it was difficult to keep running and difficult to maintain.

Posted by: retrodog

Jeepers, talk about a thread getting way off base...

We might as well start talking about simple stuff like abortion, gun control, or capital punishment. Those would be much easier to resolve. :D

Posted by: Lord Nimon

quote:
Originally posted by TheSimpsons
What does this mean…TiVo will be rolling in a giant pit of money, what do you think they are going to do with this money?? Make TiVo better of course!

Actually, history tells us that this will not happen. If anything, TiVo will simply sit there. And why not? They have no competition, so they don't have to worry about losing customers. They can keep raising the prices until they maximize revenue. In fact, the fewer customers they have for a given revenue, the better. Think of it, is it better to have 1000 customers paying $20/month, or 2000 customers paying $10/month? The former, of course, because its cheaper to service 1000 customers than it is to service 2000, yet the total revenue is identical.

I could go on, but anyone who has studied the economics of monopolies knows what I'm talking about.

Posted by: johnjohn

quote:
Originally posted by TheSimpsons
TiVo will be rolling in a giant pit of money, what do you think they are going to do with this money?? Make TiVo better of course!

Right! Dual-tuner activation is a great example of a feature that Tivo developed without having a competitor push them to... Oh wait...

quote:
Just think about it, if a business you work for just got 10 billion dollars, don?t you think you?ll be getting a better vacation and flat screen monitors for your computers.THE MORE MONEY TIVO GETS THE BETTER IT CAN BE FOR US!

How are my customers benefitted by me having a better vacation and a flat screen monitor?

Posted by: mohanram

This thread has just become a Microsoft bashing thread. I just wish the moderators would move this thread out of the TiVo forum to Microsoft bashing forums.

As for Jeff, I find your comments strange and really unbelievable. I wonder whether you really worked at Microsoft? Unix servers for email, unreliable Exchange servers, hmmm. Makes me wonder whether you worked with WebTV before they were even bought over by Microsoft!

As for Exchange servers - almost 75 to 90% of the companies out there use Exchange server for their email server. And I have never seen a single downtime during my 2 years at Microsoft TV.

Anyway can we just stop the Microsoft bashing and let TiVo speak for itself? TiVo is a great PVR product. Period. It lost one of its largest competitors. It is infact a kind of drawback to us - TiVo users. Because a giant like Microsoft competing with TiVo would have definitely kept TiVo on their toes to innovate - and innovate fast. But now they can takes it easier. They will now concentrate on expanding their consumer base instead of coming up with new & great features quickly. I know that there is Replay TV and Moxi(will that ever come to life?). But those are not what I would call competitors which TiVo would fret about.

They have a great product out there and their biggest competitor has shut shop. So definitely this is a big plus for TiVo and a small minus for us (TiVo users).

As for Ultimate TV it was a good PVR product. But it did not have any good reason for people to choose a Windows PVR product over a linux PVR called TiVo which was stable & the market leader. So they have decided to take a sabatical. When they come back into the market, I am sure they will make it a very compelling product. Just think about a PVR which could play DVD's, double as an XBox and act as as passive Windows Client which allows you to access your home Windows machine. All for $499. I am sure I will see many people just jump into this PVR market then. That is when I see this market gaining mass adoption.

Till then TiVo rules.

Posted by: JustJeff

quote:
Originally posted by mohanram
[B]This thread has just become a Microsoft bashing thread. I just wish the moderators would move this thread out of the TiVo forum to Microsoft bashing forums.

As for Jeff, I find your comments strange and really unbelievable. I wonder whether you really worked at Microsoft? Unix servers for email, unreliable Exchange servers, hmmm. Makes me wonder whether you worked with WebTV before they were even bought over by Microsoft!

Hello mohanram,

I started work at WebTV on Dec. 30, 1996, as the head Mac system administrator. I worked in IS at WebTV until a few months after Microsoft bought us, at which point I switched to Linux work in the Engineering department, and eventually wound up in Network Operations at WebTV, as the UNIX systems administrator for the test services used to develop the service software used by WebTV client boxes.

WebTV had a UNIX-based email infrastructure prior to Microsoft's purchase of the company. Corporate email between Microsoft's WAN and WebTV originally was funnelled through a UNIX gateway, and when the Silicon Valley campus went online, it began to be routed through the corporate Exchange infrastructure. WebTV employees (at least those of us in NetOps) who wanted to do so could opt to use the UNIX-based email system piggybacked on the WebTV back-end service. And our email delivery, unlike those poor unfortunates who worked in other departments and were dependent on the gigantic and unwieldy Exchange infrastructure in Microsoft Corporate, was always reliable. That's the way it was until I left Microsoft in July of 2000. Perhaps they've fixed it since then.

There were at least three significant (read: several hours to several days long) downtimes in the Exchange service at the Silicon Valley campus when I was there. The fact that you seem to have lucked out and avoided downtimes with Exchange is no proof that they don't happen. There's no email system that's 100% reliable in all cases, but I certainly wouldn't choose Exchange as a corporate email server if I could avoid it. Too much administrative overhead and not enough reliability to suit my tastes.

I hope I've satisfied your incredulity. Not everyone who worked for Microsoft has the same slavish admiration of their product line as some of their consumers. :)

On the other hand, I do like the Mac version of Internet Explorer, and Office for MacOS X is pretty good. And Flight Simulator 2002 is very nice indeed.

Posted by: spiro

quote:
Originally posted by JustJeff

Hello mohanram,

I eventually wound up in Network Operations at WebTV, as the UNIX systems administrator for the test services used to develop the service software used by WebTV client boxes.

I loved web-tv. It was so simple. So efficient. Then I got a computer with windows 98. Holy hell for 2 years until I upgraded to xp. So I go to your website and search for an e-mail address---wow! a sophisticated tech-savvy guy like JustJeff has web-tv! I used the link to moxi info and e-mailed them that I had a relatively simple question for the guy in charge of the music storage part of your home entertainment service. Any chance I will ever make contact? Do you still check your web-tv e-mail?

Posted by: JustJeff

quote:
Originally posted by spiro
I loved web-tv. It was so simple. So efficient. Then I got a computer with windows 98. Holy hell for 2 years until I upgraded to xp. So I go to your website and search for an e-mail address---wow! a sophisticated tech-savvy guy like JustJeff has web-tv! I used the link to moxi info and e-mailed them that I had a relatively simple question for the guy in charge of the music storage part of your home entertainment service. Any chance I will ever make contact? Do you still check your web-tv e-mail?

Howdy,

I haven't actually used my WebTV since I left the company. But I'll be happy to relay your question to our music system developers. Just email me at jeff@moxi.com.