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back to article Never explain, never apologize: Microsoft silent on Outlook.com email server grief

A tweak to Microsoft's Outlook.com cloud service has blocked a good number of people from accessing their messages. Specifically, the baffling and unannounced change affects Outlook.com users with connected accounts: these are email accounts hosted on third-party servers (such as a company's private server or an ISP's mail …

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  1. tirk
    Unhappy

    WTF?

    Based on the last few years performance, I can only imagine there's a betting pool amongst the thousands of MS employee stock millionaires for who can finally piss off the customers so much they actually finally go somewhere else...

    No joke icon, because I really can't come up with any different explanation.

    26 0 Reply
  2. hplasm
    Facepalm

    Footgun-

    rapid fire!

    11 1 Reply
    1. Gray
      Reply Icon
      Holmes

      Re: Footgun-

      Wasn't Outlook the "killer app" that discouraged users from migrating to alternative systems? And the MS genius elite are now applying their "experience enhancement" magic there, too? Just another "drill holes in the bottom of the boat to let the bilge water out" thinking that exemplifies MS these days.

      33 1 Reply
  3. Ken Moorhouse Silver badge

    "hosted on third-party servers"

    There's the problem.

    MS want you to move your mailbox to their cloud.

    They do not seem to understand or believe that there is any alternative option that users would consider.

    23 0 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "hosted on third-party servers"

      They do not seem to understand or believe that there is any alternative option that users would consider.

      It's more not allowing users to have any other option, which is not a new expression of the sort of corporate arrogance these people are afflicted with. For me they can't fail quickly enough, but they built a fairly large Titanic with the tax they extracted over the years from computer users, which means it'll take some time to sink properly. It's listing already, but not enough for the rats management and shareholders to bail yet

      22 0 Reply
      1. Lee D Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: "hosted on third-party servers"

        Think, though.

        Those customers DO STILL HAVE ACCESS TO THEIR DATA. Their thinking was correct.

        What they don't have is access via Outlook.com, but they still hold their own data.

        This is why I have no objection to "cloud services" so long as they aren't holding my data or capable of holding it to ransom.

        Whether they have SERVICE or not is another question entirely. But I'd be an idiot if I rolled out something like this without another way to access mailboxes, send and receive email etc.

        Backup MX records? In-house webmail? These things should be available.

        And then you question why, for instance, you're paying for an online service that - if it turns off - you run your services. And when it turns on, it's reliant on your services running. It's like hiring a chauffeur for yourself that drives your car. If he's absent, you still carry on as normal. But he can't work without your car. If the car's not working, neither of you can drive.

        Why you'd want that - except as a way to throw away money for the sake of looks - I can't fathom.

        I work in schools. They want us to move to cloud-based MIS services. But all the MIS providers allow you to run the "cloud service" from your in-house servers. Mainly because IT throw a fit if you suggest that ONLY the MIS provider holds your critical data and you have to pay to get it back out from them, and you're reliant on them working perfectly to do simple things like take attendance registers (legally required).

        So we actually have an "MIS Online" which is an online interface to the traditional SQL database for the MIS. And you can have that hosted by the provider, or hosted by yourself. So you end up in the silly situation of having "MIS Online" being a local service that you're hosting yourself, with your data also hosted in-house.

        Why would you pay the MIS provider to host AN INTERFACE to your data that requires to connect back through your firewall to get to your actual data that you're hosting in-house anyway? It's just daft.

        6 1 Reply
        1. Anonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: "hosted on third-party servers"

          You are part of DETE in Qld, AICM5P

          I was close to that, very. It changed me *L*

          0 0 Reply
  4. Frank N. Stein

    Leaky boat

    Another example of why Cloud Dependency is more about making the Cloud Vendors rich. Not much else.

    28 0 Reply
  5. analyzer

    Naughty El Reg

    Have you been nasty to Microsoft again!?

    "The Register has asked Microsoft about the issue, but after a day of waiting, we too have been left in the dark by Redmond."

    13 0 Reply
    1. Adam 1
      Reply Icon

      Re: Naughty El Reg

      Maybe Barbra Streisand can email Satya for you?

      6 0 Reply
      1. Chris Jasper
        Reply Icon
        FAIL

        Re: Naughty El Reg

        I think a mail to Santa would be more successful

        7 0 Reply
    2. VinceH
      Reply Icon

      Re: Naughty El Reg

      "Have you been nasty to Microsoft again!?"

      No, that's just another of the ways Microsoft are trying to channel Apple.

      4 0 Reply
    3. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken
      Reply Icon

      Re: Naughty El Reg

      Did they phone them? Or did they send an email?

      2 0 Reply
    4. BobChip
      Reply Icon
      FAIL

      Re: Naughty El Reg

      There's a worrying implication here that M$ might actually have been listening...... Realistically though, lets just put it down to incompetence as usual.

      2 1 Reply
  6. Terry 6 Silver badge

    MS haters

    There will probably lots of MS hating in these comments.

    In reality, it's not anything special about MS, they're all prone to this sort of cock-up and sharp practice. Not defending MS. Just pointing out that attacking them as if they were qualitatively any different from all the others is just rather pointless. Though I do think that MS seem to have a genius when it comes to corporate foot shooting.

    6 13 Reply
    1. ma1010
      Reply Icon
      Paris Hilton

      Re: MS haters

      Well, there are a lot of crap companies out there; nobody can dispute that. However, MS has recently been proactive in finding new ways to piss off their customers. The Win 8 debacle followed by the Win X worse debacle and the total arrogance now displayed in almost everything they do demonstrates this. Most crap companies will apologize (albeit insincerely) when they cock up, but, as the title of this story says, MS doesn't even bother.

      They're like a puppy that craps in your lap, then expects to be petted for it, but without the excuse of not knowing any better. They know exactly what they're doing. It's difficult to see why any sane business would want to behave like this, but the facts are hard to dispute. (Maybe Satya is selling MS short?)

      Paris because I'm confused as to why a company built on delivering products people actually wanted to use is behaving like MS does these days.

      23 1 Reply
      1. Terry 6 Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: MS haters

        ma1010

        Well, I can't argue with that. Kneejerk MS haters notwithstanding, Microsoft do seem to be doing their best to live down to the expectations of the haters, and bring plenty of new members into that fold.

        It's not that they do it once, a la exploding Samsungs, but that seem to do it with tedious regularity.

        I could understand the deliberate, cynical, concealed, sneaky, underhand, beancounter and marketing driven dodginess that the likes of Apple etc use far more than how this lot seem to be able to perpetrate these completely obvious customer unfriendly incompetent actions on an almost weekly basis. As if there was some Google/Apple 5th columnist squad infiltrating into their upper management.

        3 1 Reply
        1. Anonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: MS haters

          I could understand the deliberate, cynical, concealed, sneaky, underhand, beancounter and marketing driven dodginess that the likes of Apple etc use far more than how this lot seem to be able to perpetrate these completely obvious customer unfriendly incompetent actions on an almost weekly basis.

          You know, you cannot be but very young. If you were old enough you'd realise that you've just summarised Microsoft over its existence. Its stifling of competition by offering a comparative product for free, it's straight out stealing of Intellectual Property after a collaboration "fell through", its deliberate rigging of product to make a competing product appear flawed, its absolute disdain for any applicable law - I could go on for a bit.

          This is why older IT people instantly recognise Google too for what it really is: same behaviour, same disdain for law, same treatment of users as sheep only good for milking, same corporate lack of ethics, same marketing to make black appear white, same lobbying to avoid consequences, the works.

          11 1 Reply
          1. Anonymous Coward
            Reply Icon
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: IT people instantly recognise Google too for what it really is

            but really, it's not about Google, or MS or Apple, it's just a normal, erm... regular behaviour. Perhaps it goes with size and the feeling of self-importance, the bigger you become the bigger jerk you become.

            0 0 Reply
            1. Anonymous Coward
              Reply Icon
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: IT people instantly recognise Google too for what it really is

              Perhaps it goes with size and the feeling of self-importance, the bigger you become the bigger jerk you become.

              Ah, you mean the Zuckerberg Syndrome. Got ya.

              0 0 Reply
      2. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: They're like a puppy that craps in your lap

        more like a bull terrier that craps on your shoe and gives you the "try me" looks...

        2 0 Reply
      3. Hans 1
        Reply Icon
        Boffin

        Re: MS haters

        >Paris because I'm confused as to why a company built on delivering products people actually wanted to use is behaving like MS does these days.

        No, FFS, they have imposed their software on the masses SINCE DAY 1. First via IBM, when they had that, they started adding software to their stack, making competitors software on their system crash, simply not run, or worse, throw BOGUS errors when a competitor's software was DETECTED. (These are FACTS, UN-DENIABLE FACTS)

        Please , cut the crap, MS are evil, the most EVIL malware purveyor on this planet.

        Why ANYBODY trusts them is beyond me ... would you leave your 3 year old child with a pedophile serial killer ?

        MS, not trusted by me since 1982 (and I was too young before that year to understand what the brand on the box of floppies was).

        4 1 Reply
        1. Hans 1
          Reply Icon

          Re: MS haters

          > would you leave your 3 year old child with a pedophile serial killer ?

          I forgot the word "convicted", sorry: again:

          would you leave your 3 year old child with a convicted pedophile serial killer ?

          0 1 Reply
        2. ma1010
          Reply Icon

          Re: MS haters

          But there IS a difference nowadays. Originally, MS was poison only to business partners or other software companies they ripped off. That's normal cutthroat business. But during the late 80's and the 90's when MS came to own the desktop, they were devoted to making software that people WANTED to use. MS Windows and Office were truly great products when they came out and as they improved through the 90's.

          Under Ballmer, MS seemed to stall ending with the Win 8 debacle because of Sinofsky's inability to understand that desktop != phone. Under Nadella, they seem to be actively hostile to their customers, truly going out of their way to piss people off. That takes real arrogance.

          4 1 Reply
    2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: MS haters

      "Not defending MS. Just pointing out that attacking them as if they were qualitatively any different from all the others is just rather pointless."

      I'm struggling to follow this line of thinking. A MS service let's users down. Are you saying El Reg should write it up as if it was Google, Apple, Facebook or Amazon? Maybe they should ask Salesforce what went wrong with Outlook? Or ask Twitter when they're going to fix it? OK, they could take a swipe at Oracle in passing, I don't mind that because Oracle, but really this is an MS issue so it's MS that gets written about.

      12 2 Reply
      1. d3vy
        Reply Icon

        Re: MS haters

        Dr syntax,

        Exactly, it's not Microsoft's fault (well it is) but your quite right, it could hapoen to anyone. Thats why we will (when they restore service) continue to use outlook.com, it's been doing its job perfectly for over a year. If anything at least MS will learn from this and it won't happen again *

        * Of course, if it does happen again then it probably will be time to just!p ship. At least it's just the front end to our mail server and all of the mails are still under our control so moving will be easy!

        0 8 Reply
        1. Anonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: MS haters

          Exactly, it's not Microsoft's fault (well it is) but your quite right, it could hapoen to anyone. Thats why we will (when they restore service) continue to use outlook.com, it's been doing its job perfectly for over a year. If anything at least MS will learn from this and it won't happen again *

          You must be very new to IT and Microsoft, so I'm not sure to downvote you for breathtaking naïvety or upvote you for sarcasm...

          13 0 Reply
          1. d3vy
            Reply Icon

            Re: MS haters

            "You must be very new to IT and Microsoft, so I'm not sure to downvote you for breathtaking naïvety or upvote you for sarcasm..."

            Not at all, my point was that mistakes do happen, Similar issues could happen to anyone, we have been using outlook for a few years now and this is the first major issue we have had so will give them the benefit of the doubt, if however it happens again we will of course look to move to another provider who is willing to learn from their mistakes.

            0 10 Reply
            1. oldcoder
              Reply Icon

              Re: MS haters

              Ummm....

              Isn't this about the 10th time MS has made such mistakes? Roughly every year? Last one I recall was last spring.. The one before about two years ago, and another "cloud error" that took out Azure... and Office 365... and Outlook?

              On top of all that, the inability to issue patches without damaging customer systems... every couple of months?

              So how many times are you going to "give them the benefit of the doubt" before you actually do something to correct your problem?

              0 0 Reply
              1. Terry 6 Silver badge
                Reply Icon
                Mushroom

                Re: MS haters

                I'm with ma1010 on this one. And if you bundle together all the things they do it's more than every year. It's constant. Every time they make a change it's to remove functionality that users need, or screw up what they've left.

                It really started, for me, with the Ribbon. Incredible complexity dressed up as simplification. The removal, return and screwing up of the Start menu follows the same path. In both cases it's a matter of throwing everything in that they think you ought to want, whether the users do actually want it or not, and remove from them the option to say differently and make things usable in their own environment.

                0 0 Reply
    3. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Windows

      Re: MS haters

      There will probably lots of MS hating in these comments.

      Not at all. We will just hang around this campfire-in-a-barrel, sing and play the balalaika.

      14 0 Reply
      1. cd
        Reply Icon

        Re: MS haters

        Someone's email's blocked, kumba-yah...

        2 0 Reply
    4. a_yank_lurker
      Reply Icon

      Re: MS haters

      With Slurp telling the truth looks like hate because their antics are so incredibly stupid and brazen.

      4 3 Reply
    5. MrDamage Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: MS haters

      > "There will probably lots of MS hating in these comments."

      If you've ever had to support their flaccidware, you'd hate them too.

      13 0 Reply
    6. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Stop

      Re: MS haters

      Got to ask yourself a basic question about that statement which is: Microsoft for decades had the desktop OS market pretty much to itself and people will pretty much generally stick with what they know through laziness and familiarity even though they may grumble a little occasionally about a few minor problems here and there. If Microsoft actually was just bothered enough to learn from it's mistakes (value it's users) then it would in all probability have kept that huge user base (probably around (99% of all users at one time), it would have had people such as myself taking the plunge and deserting them to go to another OS. It wouldn't have people such as myself who do not have a good word for them (well I actually have quite a few but none are usable in public).

      I can't see that it is something vindictive about me as a person that I hate so much. In other areas of life their are manufacturers and products that I have stuck by for decades (getting older now) I realise that product / service providers may make mistakes or try something that isn't right, but that when they do this they grow as an organisation in learning what isn't right and what works for their customers and as a result your faith in that product / service strengthens.

      What MS have done is ignored or just not had as a priority at all what their customers needs are and have focussed purely on their own commercial needs which is why people have left not just because it doesn't serve their needs but also because it insults them them to be treated like cattle.

      IF (a big IF) MS had behaved properly and had put their users first then in all probability they would have retained most of that 99% domination because it takes more than being annoyed once for most users to abandon a product / service (again human nature because we are lazy and complacent), it's only when your gripes and complaints develop into a constant flow (or the complaints are monumentally huge) that we bother to think about looking elsewhere.

      What MS have done to themselves isn't the result of a few mistakes here and there ( I expect mistakes, mistakes are actually a really good thing providing you learn from them). NO what MS have done comes under ARROGANCE as they make the same mistakes again and again and will continue to do so as MS appear to believe that they are too big to fail.

      Someone else mentioned the titanic in an earlier post and I think that it a very apt comparison.

      5 1 Reply
    7. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: MS haters

      it's SO UNFAIR, you know! We hate them ALL with equal passion!

      2 0 Reply
  7. Chris G

    Foot? How about back of the head?

    I have a standard freebie Outlook that I use for most things, since the 'New, Lively, Improved Outlook last week I have lost my connection to a business email account. In addition,outlook in general has now achieved a new low in crawl speed, an ugly page format and yet another fix for something that wasn't broken, all without asking if I wanted a change.

    Yes , I know it's kind of free but good manners are too.

    15 0 Reply

  8. This post has been deleted by its author

  9. P. Lee

    Microsoft does email badly?

    I'm shocked! Shocked I tell you!

    We're a long way from the days of 50 users per exchange server, but complexity is still the enemy of reliability.

    A UI tweak fouls up email access? In the old days, we'd just go back to using our previous imap client. With proprietary cloud applications, you're out of luck. This is why we have architectural layers, not a humoungous vertically integrated do-all applications.

    Keep the protocols simple, keep the data formats simple, keep the architectural layers separate. Optimisation creates fragility. Are ya listening, HTTP/2 and systemd? Its nice that your software can do hyperscale, but who does that benefit? Proprietary hyperscale vendors. Who loses? Almost everyone else, especially those who want to do things themselves, test, observe and understand what is going on. Really, I don't need a binary database for log files - text files with well known field formats are fine. You're welcome to slurp them if you want, but leave the raw data where it is. A string of greps may be clumsy but its actually more appropriate to be able to look at context than pick particular database records. What's the point of /var/log/messages - event analysis or big data trend analysis?

    Corporates are creating their own tech priesthoods by making everything too complicated to understand, too vertically integrated to swap out any component. There is a consolidation fetish and its dangerous. Keep the UI and data separate. You can roll out a new UI without removing the old one. Basic software design principles and testing procedures seem to go out the window in the quest for webscale capabilities.

    I don't need your stinkin' interface, or even you very nice pretty interface. I just want my data. If I was told a UI tweak took out my access to email, I'd be seriously unimpressed. It isn't just the inconvenience of outage, its the unimpressiveness of design and management of the rollout.

    19 1 Reply
    1. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Microsoft does email badly?

      > but complexity is still the enemy of reliability.

      Especially when established protocols are ignored[1]..

      [1] I still remember (with some bitterness) the Exchange 5.5 ESMTP debacle. To summarise - Exchange 5.5 would respond to an EHLO with the indication that it supported ESMTP. It didn't. So when a system that did (Solaris in my case - I was herding them at the time) tried to use ESMTP it would silently hang or, in some situations, silently discard the email(s) involved. Thus was my life-long hatred of Exchange started.

      2 0 Reply
  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I found a victim of this very issue...

    I tried to send an email to one of the editors over on ARS Technica just a few minutes ago. The email got bounced by "PostMaster" with the reason that the Exchange server supposedly couldn't find the user in question. Really? So the link on the page of their article that links to their email is faulty? Maybe that editor no longer works there, even though they posted the story less than an hour ago? Or perhaps it's made clear in the "Admin Notes" near the bottom of the reply - that the Outlook.com Exchange server has shit itself & can't find *ANYBODY'S* email account over at Ars? Hmmm... that might be it!

    I knew Outlook.com was a pile of shit back in the beginning & warned family & friends not to use it. Some of them ignored me & promptly started bitching about all the troubles they've had trying to use it. Now they can't even email me to complain, & it looks like corporations using Outlook.com are regretting the choice. Oh well, not like we didn't warn them it was A Bad Idea(tm).

    9 3 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I found a victim of this very issue...

      "I tried to send an email to one of the editors over on ARS Technica just a few minutes ago. The email got bounced by "PostMaster" with the reason that the Exchange server supposedly couldn't find the user in question"

      I've had mail bounce in the past which was sent to an auditor at Microsoft.com, so they can't even run that properly.

      Since we're running Groupwise (on Linux) ourselves, naturally I had to rub that in.

      7 0 Reply
    2. d3vy
      Reply Icon

      Re: I found a victim of this very issue...

      Thats not the same issue (Though it could be related)

      The issue occurs when you have a third party mail server which is responsible for IMAP/POP/SMTP for your domain but use outlook.com as a client to access that server. In this instance the mail is getting through to the server no problem but outlook is screwing up when trying to retrieve it/send via the third party SMTP server.

      0 0 Reply
      1. oldcoder
        Reply Icon

        Re: I found a victim of this very issue...

        I suppose that means Microsoft is again using their substandard nonstandard protocols to lock out customers...

        again.

        0 0 Reply
    3. Terry 6 Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: I found a victim of this very issue...

      Outlook for the individual/small user has one significant advantage. It integrates and synchronises email, calendar and (rather poorly) contacts. The calendar bit is the killer. Having and editing your appointments on a tablet, PC and phone as required.

      2 0 Reply
      1. d3vy
        Reply Icon

        Re: I found a victim of this very issue...

        "Outlook for the individual/small user has one significant advantage. It integrates and synchronises email, calendar and (rather poorly) contacts. The calendar bit is the killer. Having and editing your appointments on a tablet, PC and phone as required."

        Our use case exactly.

        One account with a shared calendar and x accounts that can access it, everyone gets their mail through the web interface and can see the staff calendar from their Phone/PC/Tablet etc Sure, we could BUY something that does this but outlook does an adequate job for free.

        We could also use open source, but then we have to host it... again outlook does this for free.

        1 0 Reply
      2. Pompous Git Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: I found a victim of this very issue...

        Outlook for the individual/small user has one significant advantage. It integrates and synchronises email, calendar and (rather poorly) contacts.

        You can do that on Linux too. It's called GMail. Unlike MS, Google can be trusted implicitly with one's personal data and being in the cloud it's perfectly safe from third parties...

        1 1 Reply
    4. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I found a victim of this very issue...

      I tried to send an email to one of the editors over on ARS Technica just a few minutes ago. The email got bounced by "PostMaster" with the reason that the Exchange server supposedly couldn't find the user in question.

      Well serves you right for emailing the competition :). That said, you won't be able to reach The Register if Gmail screws up again - take your pick..

      :)

      0 1 Reply
      1. Hans 1
        Reply Icon
        Mushroom

        Re: I found a victim of this very issue...

        >That said, you won't be able to reach The Register if Gmail screws up again - take your pick..

        Lol, gmail outage ? what was the last, like, 44 minutes ? Here, we are talking DAYS, if not a WEEK!

        1 1 Reply
    5. Pompous Git Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: I found a victim of this very issue...

      I knew Outlook.com was a pile of shit back in the beginning & warned family & friends not to use it. Some of them ignored me & promptly started bitching about all the troubles they've had trying to use it. Now they can't even email me to complain,

      It's not all bad news then :-)

      0 0 Reply
  11. Mikel

    It's no big deal

    You weren't using their services for anything important, were you?

    3 0 Reply
  12. david 12 Silver badge

    SSL authentication

    MS web mail seems to be having some troubles with SSL authentication. I'm guessing that they've tried to tighten it up, remove old protocols, all the standard stuff. And broken lots of legacy connections -- all the standard stuff when you change/tighten authentication rules.

    The question is if this will be fixed. Like Google and Apple, MS has shown that they are perfectly willing to chop off legacy services no longer considered tactically important.

    1 0 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: SSL authentication

      Microsoft and security? Never a good combination!

      Don't forget that their crappy DNS-implementation is basically forcing companies to use shorter DKIM signatures (longer than 1024 bits and you risk Microsoft not recognizing it).

      4 0 Reply
    2. d3vy
      Reply Icon

      Re: SSL authentication

      "MS web mail seems to be having some troubles with SSL authentication. I'm guessing that they've tried to tighten it up, remove old protocols, all the standard stuff. And broken lots of legacy connections -- all the standard stuff when you change/tighten authentication rules."

      My first thought too, however as it has intermittently worked I dont think this is the case...

      0 0 Reply
      1. oldcoder
        Reply Icon

        Re: SSL authentication

        Naaa... That is just an indication that they haven't finished breaking the working servers...

        0 0 Reply
    3. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: SSL authentication

      "Like Google and Apple, MS has shown that they are perfectly willing to chop off legacy services no longer considered tactically important."

      YES! That's what you do with legacy. You never want to utter the word legacy. Like, "I'm so proud I support legacy systems." Or, "There's nobody left who knows how these legacy systems were built, so we hope they don't go down.

      0 0 Reply
  13. Mark Simon

    Never explain, never apologize, never use

    Never again

    3 0 Reply
  14. ArthurKinnell
    Happy

    Feeling smug

    that I put a stop to a proposal 18 months ago to migrate from Office 2003 and GroupWise 2014 to Office 365 with hosted Exchange. OK on paper it was cheaper (well the office 365 but was), when you look at total cost of ownership and sub fees over 4 years we were better off getting Office 2016 and commiting to GroupWise. Glad we did, as our data is still ours and there is only me to blame if GroupWise goes down which frankly it never does.

    3 0 Reply
  15. Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge
    Trollface

    format c:

    install linux

    9 1 Reply
    1. d3vy
      Reply Icon

      And that helps with this problem how?

      1 0 Reply
      1. oldcoder
        Reply Icon

        By installing software that uses industry standard protocols...

        They work, and have worked for over 40 years.

        0 0 Reply
        1. Pompous Git Silver badge
          Reply Icon

          By installing software that uses industry standard protocols...

          They work, and have worked for over 40 years.

          They even worked before they were adopted in them days :-)

          0 0 Reply
  16. Adam 1

    weird

    When their cloudy visual studio login stuff went down a few months back they were incredibly open about the timelines, what went wrong, what lessons they had learnt etc. Sad if they are reverting to form.

    1 0 Reply
  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Punt

    OK off-topic but hopefully makes some sense.

    Skype yesterday refused log on from my network on any devices (with fresh Skype installs, PC, Linux and Android), I see someone talking of turning back on old ssl protocols to get round it, I didn't try.

    Unable to connect was the report, no changes to router in that time.

    Today exactly the same "unable to connect" so tried to log on to browser at work (Linux), failed "unable to connect", tried again "account not found", again from another laptop at work (linux), managed to log on, back to first browser log on OK. Tried from PC (win8) at home "cannot connect", tried again, connected like no issue. Tried Skype client connected like no issue.

    I think it is something to do with MS/Legacy accounts, authentication and load sharing.

    I'd be interested if someone with an Outlook.com problem logged on, or at least attempted to with a browser a few times, from a few locations.

    Sorry if this is off-topic but by choice I have very little exposure to MS cloud services but did hit deadlock yesterday. It either cleared while looking, or poking it with browsers made something link back up.

    2 0 Reply
  18. Chris Jasper

    Standard Corporate Approach

    Symantec are pretty much the same, they decided to rebrand MessageLabs this week and change the website branding for spam manager, the format of the spam manager emails they send to users, and informed people with a blog post on their news alerts that most of us didnt have access to.

    Cue calls from lots of users and infosec types demanding to know what this phishing/malware/terrorist virus attack was all about.

    Symantec's response? "It wasn't a major upgrade, what's the fuss about?".

    Would have thought the mass of phone calls you evidently got that stopped us getting through for hours would have clued you in guys?

    5 0 Reply
  19. Geronimo!
    Pint

    Thank you, M$!

    For yet again delivering me massive amounts of data, which helps me to convince new customers, why hosting your mails on our servers (No M$!) is a better idea than to go to Office360,5.

    Satya: I owe you a beer for this...hence the icon.

    2 0 Reply
  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    we too have been left in the dark by Redmond.

    well, given how you keepn undermining their Immaculate, Long-Term Reputation with your utterly unfounded and totally biased "articles", I'm surprised they haven't banned you earlier ;)

    1 2 Reply
    1. d3vy
      Reply Icon

      Re: we too have been left in the dark by Redmond.

      "well, given how you keepn undermining their Immaculate, Long-Term Reputation with your utterly unfounded and totally biased "articles", I'm surprised they haven't banned you"

      The reporting on the reg isnt biased, everyone is shown the same level of contempt!

      2 0 Reply
  21. Neoc

    Welcome to the future

    Where you will be running the software version they want you to run, whether you want to or need to, or in fact if it clobbers function(s) you require.

    Welcome to the world of Software-as-a-service, where you've become the Beta testers by default.

    0 0 Reply
    1. Terry 6 Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Welcome to the future

      And with SaaS you can never own your software, so can never say that This version is good enough for me and stop paying for the next version. (As with my Photoshop Elements 9 - which will do everything I will ever need from it).

      1 0 Reply
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Welcome to the future

        This problem is still very much live. No resolution from MS. It is with their "research dept" apparently. 60 hours spent on chat, phone and email. No response to emails at all. They don't have a Complaints Dept apparently. Their chat staff try hard but have no knowledge. When they do bother to phone you back (I've had 5 promised call backs that never materialised, then you have to start with 2 hours of chat interaction again. Intranisgent staff who know nothing. L1 support have no knowledge at all. L2 just collect logs. You're not allowed to speak to L3s! If you supply logs they take them and do nothing with them. Then the ask if they can remote onto your machine to take more logs.

        A complete and utter SHAMBLES. Still, we all love MS don't we.

        0 0 Reply
  22. woddy

    Self Abuse

    blah blah whinge whinge bitch moan vomit.

    but I'll keep using shitty Microsoft products because I am a stupid twat

    end of story

    0 0 Reply

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