Unhappy Customers and Wasted Time

[boleyd]

You would think that after spending millions of dollars(etc) supporting programs and trying to retain unhappy customers that the vendors would try to petition Microsoft to jointly develop a more structured system. This habit of Microsoft to support every odd gadget that is developed creates problems. It would be nice if we had an "almost" Safe Mode that could be configured as per a vendor's instructions.

Yes, I know that such a simplified system can be created to a degree. However. most people would do more harm that good trying it on their own. This constant hassle with N3V trying to update/upgrade Trainz is a good example, not of the quality of the vendor's efforts, but of the myriad of PC systems setting out there.

Since Microsoft would not see an immediate return on any cost of developing a clean system, perhaps N3V might think about that. I wonder if a BAT file with some C+ routines, if needed, could be created to to form a minimum system for Trainz. If you have a problem, and are not on a "safe" configuration then you would have to try running on the safe system and see if the error/issue remains. If so it would be a high probability that N3V has a problem and, given the simple system structure, a correction should be less costly as well.

This fix 3 things, break 2, is costing N3V customers, addon revenue and new sales as well as some very expensive hours as their staff attempts to sort through customer reports.

 

[oknotsen]

So, what is it you wanted to discuss?

 

[flusi737]

So, what is it you wanted to discuss?

:hehe:
ten.....

 

[bunkerrattmk2]

ergot from old rye bread or what?

 

[johnwhelan]

The operating system should isolate the hardware from the software. Microsoft have a suite of software which can be used to verify a particular machine build but the cost of having them confirm the machine is rather high for a one off and at the lower end of the market place very few vendors make use of it.

Individual vendors can create a driver for their bit of hardware but again although there is a verification process not all vendors see the merit of using it. Trainz uses bit of windows and windows drivers that many other programs don't use so you are more likely to hit problems on none mainstream equipment.

Apple do control all the hardware that goes into one of their machines but there is a cost to this and normally a Chrome or Windows based machine will be cheaper.

Cheerio John

 

[mezzoprezzo]

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I'm not an unhappy customer.

Thought I'd just pop in to waste a bit of time!

 

[geophil]

You would think that after spending millions of dollars(etc) supporting programs and trying to retain unhappy customers that the vendors would try to petition Microsoft to jointly develop a more structured system. This habit of Microsoft to support every odd gadget that is developed creates problems. It would be nice if we had an "almost" Safe Mode that could be configured as per a vendor's instructions.

If you refer to Windows 8.n and its confusing tile and app subsystem, this has been a strategic decision. It may alienate customers but MS deliberately chose this way, see Steven Sinofsky's statement after he'd left MS.

Simply stick with Win 7.

 

[ftldave]

There's plenty of alternatives, like Classic Shell, to move past Win8's Metro interface. AMD video drivers and such seem to be the worst problems for Windows 8 now. As far as separating the OS from hardware, Sun tried that with something called JAVA, and it's a tech support mess right now, so that's hardly a golden solution. At my job, one of our main software vendors is throwing in the towel on JAVA applets in hope that HTML5 will be better for their ecommerce system. And, fact is, game companies are moving to consoles and away from pc's to simplify development and support issues. Look at what Microsoft did with Aces and all. Pc's are complex, and I think it should be no surprise that folks who can barely type often don't have the skills or temperament to configure their pc's and apps to run well, at least not without lots of help. Thank heaven for our forum.

 

[boleyd]

So, what is it you wanted to discuss?

I thought it was obvious but I failed. The idea was to see if such an idea had any merit but I guess I was totally wrong in my thinking. A moderator may delete this and reclaim wasted disk space. Sorry for the interruption.

 

[JCitron]

I thought it was obvious but I failed. The idea was to see if such an idea had any merit but I guess I was totally wrong in my thinking. A moderator may delete this and reclaim wasted disk space. Sorry for the interruption.

It's not such an invalid question or statement. This is why it is very difficult to develop a program that runs as well as Trainz does on multitudes of similar, but dissimilar hardware. The components maybe of a particular standard, but they vary in quality. As John Whalen has pointed out, many of the lesser-quality manufacturers don't want to spend the time or money to be fully certified by Microsoft so their drivers operate properly with the operating system. This is the WHQL-certified tag you see in the driver name. This means that Microsoft and the hardware manufacturer spent the time to test and certify that the drivers and hardware will work.

As ftlDave pointed out, there are some programs that don't mesh well with the operating system and these too can cause problems. Among them is Java. Ideally, when Java was first released it did what it was supposed to do. Sadly, as time has gone on and under the ownership of Oracle, the programming language has become more complex and now intrudes on the operating system in some ways. This can cause problems, conflicts, with other programs with the way it interacts.

There are ways around this, however, this would mean we'd not have the low-cost hardware we have today since everything would be controlled by the hardware manufacturer who also writes the operating system. Apple still does this today, and so does Oracle for their SPARC platform. This is how it was in the old days. You'd by a specific flavor of an operating system to operate on your specific hardware. This controlled the stability, but it limited the choices for the consumer.

So in the end there are trade-offs for wanting cheap computers which run pretty well, or running something that is locked down with a premium in both hardware and software costs.

I fixed your typo too, Dick in the title.

John

 

[oknotsen]

I thought it was obvious but I failed.

Just to make it 100% clear I had no wrong intentions / did not want to offend you:
I read your post and could not figure out if you wanted to complain about Trainz or Microsoft or that you wanted to discuss or suggest some sort of solution and did not want to take the topic in any wrong direction so the only option left was to simply ask what you wanted to discuss.

 

[johnwhelan]

Just to make it 100% clear I had no wrong intentions / did not want to offend you:
I read your post and could not figure out if you wanted to complain about Trainz or Microsoft or that you wanted to discuss or suggest some sort of solution and did not want to take the topic in any wrong direction so the only option left was to simply ask what you wanted to discuss.

Or even which operating system.

Cheerio John

 

[rjhowie]

Just think that if Linux was more wider contained - Directx, etc that would be brilliant. No expensive OS and such, Well Christmas coming makes you dreamy.

 

[JCitron]

Just think that if Linux was more wider contained - Directx, etc that would be brilliant. No expensive OS and such, Well Christmas coming makes you dreamy.

Good point as you say "if Linux was more wider contained", herein lies the problem with Linux and Unix in general, and was the problem before IBM and Microsoft "standardized" everything to what we have today. If you purchase Red Hat Linux, you'll have to ensure that the packages you download or purchase are written for Red Hat version and not Ubuntu or Susi, for example. It gets even more complicated if you're running hardware-specific versions such as Oracle Linux written to run on their ODA or Sun Servers.

John

 

[pdkoester]

I think he wants the equivalent of a console in a PC form factor. Just my guess.

 

[nicky9499]

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I'm not an unhappy customer.

Casper, from the perspective of the corporate folks at N3V, you're not even a customer any more! :hehe:

 

[mezzoprezzo]

Casper, from the perspective of the corporate folks at N3V, you're not even a customer any more! :hehe:

I was an Auran one though, and I'm still happy!

We now have a new “C” word. Not just customers, but contributors.

Contributions can be constructive ones on the forum and/or pledges to the new Trainz era.

Direct link here for info, or to make a pledge and back the project.

'