Forcing users to choose a browser other than Internet Explorer doesn’t help them

In the news this morning, I stumbled across an article, EU: 100 million Microsoft users to choose browser. Reading this, there were a few instances of questionable logic.
The first instance (emphasis added):
Microsoft is starting this month to send updates to Windows computers in Europe so that when computer users log on, they will see a [...]

Live search’s extra spaces (only for Firefox, of course)

Go to http://www.asp.net and do a search to see a nifty AJAXy popup search results box, powered by Live Search and including some advertising (which I deliberately grayed out below). Look closely, and you’ll see the URLs in the search results (circled in red) have spaces where spaces just shouldn’t be. No surprise, this happens [...]

Stupid things to say: “Point your favorite browser to…”

I received an email today from Microsoft, “Introducing MSDN Online Subscriptions!” Very exciting for sure; I had no idea this is something new, as I’ve been downloading things from my MSDN subscription for years. But I digress. The “stupid thing to say” in this email is:

Point your favorite browser to http://msdn2.microsoft.com/subscriptions

Do you expect people to [...]

Installing Systems Center Essentials fails: “The specified domain does not exist or cannot be contacted.”

I’m trying to evaluate Microsoft’s Systems Center Essentials 2007. I say “trying” because every time I install it, I get an error in the setup log file.
The specified domain does not exist or cannot be contacted.
This makes no sense, because I’m logged in with a domain administrator account and the setup program is validating the [...]

Excel crashes, and flooding Microsoft with error reports

Excel 2007 crashed on me while I was scrolling vertically using the mouse wheel. Impressively, Excel was able to recover, apparently right back where I left off scrolling.
I continued trying to scroll (again with the mouse wheel), and once again, after about 100 or so rows scroll by, Excel crashes again. This time, I [...]