Finding Visio… aka… People Wonder Why I’m on a Mac
Friday, March 28th, 2008
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People wonder why I don’t use Microsoft as much as I have in the past. Some people think the entire PC/Mac thing is just a joke. I thought the PC versus Mac thing was just a joke, too. It’s not. I’ve been on a Mac now officially for one year.
And I’m spoiled.
The worst thing about working on a Mac is having to work on a PC as well. I do so every day at work. I recently loaded Vista (it still bluescreens after hibernation) and needed to download and reinstall Microsoft Visio Standard Edition. Easy, right? I purchased it from Microsoft online so I’ll just go and download it again, and reinstall it.
I go to the logical place, Microsoft Download Center. There’s a Silverlight beta of Microsoft Download Center so I go for it! I simply type “Visio” in the “search downloads” field. Here’s what comes up first with 119 results:
What’s the first ranked result? Not Visio at all… it’s the 2007 Microsoft Office Add-in: Microsoft Save as PDF or XPS. Huh? (I’m not even going to try to figure out why the first result was rank #31). So, I read and sort and read and sort and expand to show 100 results… I can’t find Visio anywhere… just some viewers and a bunch of other crap.
Off to the Office site! Since I purchased Visio online, I figured I’d be able to get back to the store through the Microsoft. I fumble around a little, but I find it… Visio Standard Edition. And on the left sidebar… Previous Purchases! Yahoo!!!!… er… I mean Wahooo!!! I click Previous Purchases and my invoice number pops up. Yea!!!! Almost there!!!! I click the purchase and this is what I get:
Ouch. I’m using Internet Explorer 7 even… not even risking this one on Firefox. I clear my cookies. I navigate back, click on my invoice… and….
You suck Microsoft! On and off the web… you suck! Now I can’t get my project done today with the software I’m disappointed in that you made me upgrade that cost me another $150 that I can’t download and can’t use.
People really wonder why I’m on a Mac.
No wonder why the Microsoft Brand is in decline. I’d be surprised to learn whether or not Microsoft employees had to even use their own products, online or offline.
