[PCWorld]

Post your comments for WGA Meltdown Casts Doubt on Microsoft Reliability here

[rgreen4]

The article opines that until WGA becomes so much of a problem that people would stop buying windows, well, windows market share has dwindled - a few points, but that is not going to happen any time soon. What may happen sooner, is that one of our erstwhile elected Representatives that gave us SMCA will have his/her machine tagged, and then there may be Congressional hearings. Until then we are at their mercy.

[adbadqc]

The other aspect of this that will cause Microsoft problems is how do you convince an S&P500 CIO/CTO that your software is "mission critical" when you have a 19 hour outage that impacts your users?

Very very embarassing.

[Dewcrav3r]

Don't get me wrong, I love some of Microsoft's products (namely Office 2007), but lately they having been going down the tube. Vista is a flop, security is an oxymoron, WGA for Vista was hacked, and now the WGA servers were down for the time equivalent of over 2 business-days. I think there are some great people at Microsoft, but I think there are a majority of them that just don't get it. They are a monopoly, but they don't take the responsiblility of one.

It is true that reversing any significant number of their market share will take years, but it has to be done. Existing customers will complain, but like the analyst said, they might improve but will not change. The only thing Microsoft will listen to with full attention is loss of market share. If people will tell Windows to take a hike and switch to Linux, or buy a Mac, Microsoft will be forced to change.

I say make your choice: complain with little avail, or change and have a voice as loud as a stadium.

[techie4fun]

Not good news to be reading about. I certainly hope Microsoft gets this fixed soon.

[tbsteph1]

Is WGA a pain? Yes! If you ran MS, would you institute a method to reduce theft? Likely. Is any system failsafe? No. Unfortunate that some experienced a problem. But, let's get a grip, anyone's server can go on the fritz including Gartner's or Skype's or even Wells Fargo. I expect more Windows users had a hard drive failure over the 19 hour period than those unable to successfully use WGA. Life "ain't" perfect.

[adbadqc]

Life is not perfect, but IT professionals should be able to design an application and the infrastructure it runs on to minimize impact to users.

Until Microsoft sees fit to tell us what happened, all this is conjecture, HOWEVER:

1) Why was WGA designed to alarm on a condition where servers were down/dying? Why wasn't it designed to assume no problem, or simply flag "cannot validate due to system error, please try later". From what I've read, it defaulted to "you're a crook" mode. Stupid stupid design if true. If you're going to drop the hammer on a paying customer, you better be pretty sure it's warranted.

2) Why 19 hours? If I'm a CIO, and Microsoft is suggesting I use things like SQL Server, Sharepoint, etc in a mission critical system, and I see them suffering a 19 hour outage... well, you gotta wonder. In the words of Ricky Ricardo, somebody has "some 'splainin to do". What if this was a 911 system? An airport control tower system?

We should expect better from IT industry leaders: Microsoft, IBM, Sun, HP, Oracle. Their systems reflect upon their products.

[RNR19952]

WGA is a crock
What gives M$ the RIGHT to CRIPPLE your PC?
Vista is crap, if you buy it you deserve what you get
Were the phone lines down too?
And why once you authenticate to WGA must you do it over and over again?
That WGA notification is SPYWARE by definition!
Anything that phones home without permission is spyware, and then there is no uninstall for it? What an absolutely arrogant company FU BILL! You greedy bastard How many times as M$ been convicted of overcharging?
Then their penalty ...ooohhh they give you free software but still charge over 400.00 US for their OS and Office...Come on people at least quit using Office?
What's so great about that anyway?

[fredbird67]

When I first heard about WGA or its forefunner, which was back in late 2002, when I was considering an upgrade from Windows 98 to XP, I read all the details and learned that even upgrading your hardware would make WGA think you're a crook and disable your copy of XP. I'm not advocating software piracy, but to me, such a draconian policy was unacceptable, so I took matters into my own hands and switched from Windows to Linux and today, I'm a very happily satisfied PCLinuxOS user, and I'm not switching back to Windows for nobody. Windows is the past. Linux is the future.